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brandi-the-fine-girl · 5 years

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76th Golden Globe Awards Predictions

Let’s be real here. The Golden Globes are the biggest joke of Hollywood (right after the Emmy’s that is). Remember when they nominated The Tourist in the Comedy/Musical category? Or when they gave the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress to Jennifer Lawrence instead of Lupita Nyong’o? Or when Get Out was nominated in Comedy/Musical (even though, yes, it was a dark comedy at times)?

So it comes as no surprise that this year’s list of nominees follows the same path. The Golden Globes are the biggest wild card of all award shows and the Hollywood Foreign Press loves to throw curveballs. With that said, here are my predictions for the 76th Golden Globe Awards.

Best Motion Picture - Drama

Will win: A Star Is Born

Should win: A Star Is Born

Dark Horse: Black Panther

Look, I loved Black Panther. And the fact that it has gained this much momentum during award season is a victory for Marvel Studios. But I’m expecting a sweep for A Star Is Born. Now, that doesn’t mean ASIB will maintain this momentum for the rest of award season. The HFPA likes to play favorites and I’m sure ASIB will be this year’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (which won four Golden Globes last year). But a win for Black Panther would be huge and make it a bigger contender for the Oscars.

Best Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical

Will win: Green Book

Should win: Crazy Rich Asians

Dark Horse: Mary Poppins Returns

The Comedy/Musical category is always the oddball category (see above about The Tourist and Get Out). And it’s typically the category where anyone can win. I’m going to go with Green Book since it won the People’s Choice at TIFF this year but with a diverse voting roster (it is the Hollywood FOREIGN Press after all), I wouldn’t count out Crazy Rich Asians.

Best Director

Will win: Alfonso Cuaron, Roma

Should win: Alfonso Cuaron, Roma

Dark Horse: Adam McKay, Vice

For me, I believe this is the only category A Star Is Born will not win. Cuaron’s beautifully stunning and heartbreaking semi-autobiographical film was featured on Obama’s list of films he saw in 2018. Bradley Cooper’s first directorial feature is a stunning accomplishment but it doesn’t match Cuaron’s ability to paint the anguish and loss in Roma.

Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama

Will win: Bradley Cooper, A Star Is Born

Should win: Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody

Dark Horse: John David Washington, BlacKkKlansman

With a possible loss in the Directing category, Bradley will most like scoop up the Actor in a Drama award. Sure, his character was doomed from the start and it makes for a great challenge for an actor like Bradley. But Rami’s complete transformation into Freddie Mercury has me convinced he should win. Don’t count out John David Washington in BlacKkKlansman though. He’s new to the scene as an actor (he is Denzel Washington’s son) but his performance is definitely one to look out for.

Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama

Will win: Lady Gaga, A Star Is Born

Should win: Glenn Close, The Wife

Dark Horse: Melissa McCarthy, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Once again, I’m predicting a sweep for A Star Is Born but I don’t think Lady Gaga will snag two Oscars come Oscar night (that is, if she is nominated for songwriting and Best Actress). Glenn Close is well overdue for some awards love and it seems like her time might come.

Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical

Will win: Christian Bale, Vice

Should win: Christian Bale, Vice

Dark Horse: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mary Poppins Returns

It’s hard for me to choose anyone else when Christian Bale is in a category. This is the man that got rail thin for his roles in The Machinist and The Fighter (the latter of which he did win Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars) and bulked up for Batman Begins (gaining 100 pounds) almost six months after filming The Machinist. His transformation into the notorious Dick Cheney seems like typical awards bait to me. But let’s not count out the lovable Lin-Manuel Miranda. The man works hard on stage and screen. I’d love to see a win for him

Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical

Will win: Olivia Colman, The Favourite

Should win: Constance Wu, Crazy Rich Asians

Dark Horse: Emily Blunt, Mary Poppins Returns

The category is such a wild card for me. I’m sure by the end of 2019, everyone will know who Olivia Colman is. From the little bit I’ve seen of The Favourite, she’s amazing. However, I do think Constance Wu is more deserving of the accolades. This category could really go to anyone and with the lovable Emily Blunt also nominated, it could possibly go to the legendary Mary Poppins herself.

Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture

Will win: Mahershala Ali, Green Book

Should win: Timothée Chalamet, Beautiful Boy

Dark Horse: Adam Driver, BlacKkKlansman

Look, before you rip me to shreds, here me out. I have loved Mahershala Ali since he was on House of Cards and he was painfully robbed in 2017 when the HFPA gave Best Supporting Actor to Aaron Taylor-Johnson instead of Mahershala. It feels like Mahershala deserves the accolades as a “sorry we gave it to someone else and then you ended up winning the Oscar anyways.” However, I just watched Beautiful Boy last night and Timothée kills it. I’m not some crazy fangirl. I just know a good performance when I see one. Let’s not count out Adam Driver, though, who knocks it out of the park in BlacKkKlansman.

Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture

Will win: Amy Adams, Vice

Should win: Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk

Dark Horse: Claire Foy, First Man

Since Amy Adams most likely won’t win for Best Actress in Mini Series (more on that later), I’m hoping this is where she gets her due. The woman is long overdue for the awards love (a lot like Glenn Close). She’s basically the female Leonardo DiCaprio, if you must. The fact that Regina King did not nab a SAG Award nomination for If Beale Street Could Talk is a little ominous (side note: the acting branch is the largest branch of the Academy and a lack of SAG nomination is very telling). I like to hope that she can pick up a Globe as recognition for her stunning work. To me, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone split the vote so my Dark Horse goes to Claire Foy. I wouldn’t be surprised if HFPA voters’ obsession with her throws us a curveball in this category.

Best Screenplay

Will win: Adam McKay, Vice

Should win: Alfonso Cuaron, Roma

Dark Horse: Bryan Hayes Currie, Peter Farrelly, Nick Vallelonga, Green Book

This is usually a difficult category considering the Oscars split the Screenplay category into Adapted and Original. The HFPA likes to play it safe by awarding previous winners and nominees so I’m going with Adam McKay who won the Oscar for The Big Short. Alfonso Cuaron is equally deserving if Best Director doesn’t go his way. But come Oscar time, I’m expecting a win for Green Book.

Best Original Score

Will win: Alexandre Desplat, Isle of Dogs

Should win: Ludwig Goransson, Black Panther

Dark Horse: Marco Beltrami, A Quiet Place

Alexandre Desplat won last year for The Shape of Water (a well-deserved win if I do say so myself) but I feel Ludwig Goransson may have a chance here.

Best Original Song

Will win: “Shallow”

Should win: “Shallow” or “All The Stars”

Dark Horse: “Girl in the Movies”

Probably the easiest category of the evening. You can’t turn on any radio station without hearing “Shallow.” And rightfully so. The dynamic between Bradley and Gaga is mesmerizing and Gaga’s high note is the most memorable part of it. However, I wouldn’t mind some recognition to “All The Stars.” Personally, I feel like “Pray For Me” is the better song but let’s give some love to Kendrick and SZA if we can.

Best Animated Feature Film

Will win: The Incredibles 2

Should win: The Incredibles 2

Dark Horse: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

I mean, no contest, this one goes to The Incredibles 2. Very rarely does Pixar lose an award (exceptions go to Cars 2 and Monsters University) but if it does, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse might take it.

Best Foreign Language Film

Will win: Roma

Should win: Roma

Dark Horse: Girl

Again, no contest, Roma. But Girl could take it since it won the Caméra d’Or and the Queer Palm at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018. Unfortunately, the film did not make the short list for the Best Foreign Language Film category for this year’s Oscars so maybe it may get its due here.

Best Television Series - Drama

Will win: The Americans

Should win: The Americans

Dark Horse: Pose

After six seasons, The Americans ended on a high note. It felt painfully under-appreciated at the Emmys this year, so maybe this is where it will get its due. However, don’t overlook Pose since everything Ryan Murphy touches turns to awards gold.

Best Television Series - Comedy/Musical

Will win: Barry

Should win: Barry

Dark Horse: Kidding

After winning big at the Emmys, I’m predicting some major love for Barry. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is last year’s winner which may hinder Barry’s chances but the HFPA does tend to choose different winners every year.

Best Actor in a Television Series - Drama

Will win: Matthew Rhys, The Americans

Should win: Matthew Rhys, The Americans

Dark Horse: Richard Madden, Bodyguard

After scooping up an Emmy, Matthew Rhys will probably continue his awards sweep with a Golden Globe. Billy Porter may give him a run for his money in Pose (he was also wonderful in American Horror Story: Apocalypse). If we want a shocker, the HFPA could go with Richard Madden in Bodyguard. Good looks aside, Madden portrays a former British Army sergeant with PTSD fantastically. It is unclear if Bodyguard has been greenlit for a second season but a Globes win might cement that status.

Best Actress in a Television Series - Drama

Will win: Sandra Oh, Killing Eve

Should win: Keri Russell, The Americans

Dark Horse: Julia Roberts, Homecoming

One half of our emcees for the evening, expect Sandra Oh to pick up a Globe as well. Keri Russell was horribly robbed at the Emmys so she is more deserving for her final season of The Americans. America’s Sweetheart Julia Roberts is a threat to these two with the inaugural season of her Amazon Prime series Homecoming. Here’s where you can possibly expect a big shocker but I’m still sticking with Ms. Christina Yang herself.

Best Actor in a Television Series - Comedy/Musical

Will win: Bill Hader, Barry

Should win: Bill Hader, Barry

Dark Horse: Jim Carrey, Kidding

I’ve always had a soft spot for Bill Hader since he was on Saturday Night Live. Starring as a former Marine-turned hitman-turned aspiring actor is the most Bill Hader thing that Bill Hader could possibly do. Jim Carrey has been placing himself more in the comedy/drama (aka “dramedy”) category as of recent years so don’t count him out in this race.

Best Actress in a Television Series - Comedy/Musical

Will win: Rachel Brosnahan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Should win: Alison Brie, GLOW

Dark Horse: Kristen Bell, The Good Place

Rachel Brosnahan could possibly be a repeat winner here. Season two of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is getting just as great reviews as season one did (if not as great, then better). Personally, I feel Alison Brie deserves it but Candice Bergen may come through with the win as well. However, this Kristen Bell’s first-ever Golden Globe nomination so she could very well take it.

Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film

Will win: Darren Criss, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story

Should win: Darren Criss, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story

Dark Horse: Hugh Grant, A Very English Scandal

We’ve come a long way since A Very Potter Musical, haven’t we? Darren Criss’s portrayal as Versace’s murderer Andrew Cunanan is one of the best performances I’ve seen in recent years. The creepy smile underneath his hand as he sees the news that Versace has been killed makes him a lock for this category.

Best Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film

Will win: Laura Dern, The Tale

Should win: Amy Adams, Sharp Objects

Dark Horse: Regina King, Seven Seconds

Like I said above, I’m hoping Amy Adams will get her due in the Best Supporting Actress category because it seems like she won’t get it here. Laura Dern is a favorite of the HFPA so she most likely will win. Amy Adams is the more deserving here but if things don’t work out for Best Supporting Actress, I’m hoping the HFPA does a flip-flop gives it to her here. Regina King won the Emmy for Seven Seconds but she seems like a long shot here.

Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film

Will win: Henry Winkler, Barry

Should win: Edgar Ramirez, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story

Dark Horse: Kieran Culkin, Succession

It’s always been odd to me that the Golden Globes don’t split their supporting television categories. Sure, it makes for great competition but it’s also incredibly unfair. I’m going with Henry Winkler in Barry (who was well overdue for that Emmy) but Edgar Ramirez definitely should be the winner in my eyes. Kieran Culkin (the only nominee for HBO’s Succession) could pull a surprise win here.

Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film

Will win: Penélope Cruz, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story

Should win: Penélope Cruz, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story OR Patricia Clarkson, Sharp Objects OR Thandie Newton, Westworld

Dark Horse: Yvonne Strahovski, The Handmaid’s Tale

This is, quite possibly, the most competitive category of the entire award show. And, yet again, another reason why it’s absurd that the Golden Globes don’t split their supporting television categories. Alex Borstein and Thandie Newton both have the upper hand in this category since they both won Emmys in the supporting actress categories in comedy and drama, respectively. But their recent Emmy wins could cancel them out, making way for either Penélope Cruz or Patricia Clarkson to nab the award. I’m going with Penélope though since she was robbed of the Emmy. I am hoping for an Emmy win for Patricia Clarkson come September.

Best Miniseries or Television Film

Will win: The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story

Should win: The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story

Dark Horse: A Very English Scandal

Riveting from start to finish with stunning performances from the cast, Versace is a lock. In any other year, I’d give it to Sharp Objects but the show also lagged a bit. If I hadn’t read the book, I might have been bored. The series was more of a performance piece for the actors instead of being a masterpiece as a whole. Versace has it all. And, of course, it’s another Ryan Murphy masterpiece.

Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh host the 76th Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, January 6 at 8 pm EST/5:00 pm PST.

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tigerintokyo · 6 years

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IDOLiSH7 Part 3, Ch 11.1

Chapter 11: It was a good song.

Episode 1: Two Hours Left

(other parts in the directory)

Translation under the break.

Iori: ….. (sigh).....

Tsumugi: Iori-san, where exactly did everyone go?

Iori: Everyone was worried about Trigger, so they went to look for clues of their whereabouts.

Tsumugi: Is that so….? But, I hope that everyone in Trigger is safe.

(phone rings)

Iori: Excuse me. I’m going to go out to take this call.

Tsumugi: Alright.

Iori: This is Iori. Two hours remain until it is time for the performance to start. Team 2, 3, and 4, please stand by.

Iori: Currently, Team 1 is closing in on the head office building of Tsukumo Prod.

Reception Desk: Welcome ….. ah…..

Yuki: Hello, I’m here to see Ryo-san.

Reception Desk: ….. (gasp) Yuki-san from Re:vale…! I--I’ll check right now.

Yuki: Thank you. Ah…..

Reception Desk: Yes?

Yuki: Here, you’re ribbon is crooked.

Reception Desk: Ah…. I’m sorry! ….I can do it ….. How embarrassing...

Yuki: Is it?

Momo: Yuki, the others are waiting.

Yuki: Ah, take the car keys.

Momo: OK.

Yuki: Oh, he’s my partner.

Reception Desk: I… I know. ...Ah… It’s a good thing I was working today.

Momo: Hello. Now, I am headed into the president’s office. I’m going to make that guy cry and apologize!

Momo: Since he went as far as abducting them, he probably used some shady people. After getting their whereabouts, I’ll contact… Wait a second.

Momo: Good work today~!

Man: Good work…, Re:vale?!

Momo: But this is the first time meeting you? Ryo-san really did a good job telling everyone about me!

Momo: I came because I have a favor to ask, but how is Ryo-san doing today? Isn’t it scary if he’s in a bad mood?

Man: Mr. Tsukumo is out right now...

Momo: Ok, I’ll wait here, so call Ryo-san. I have just one thing I want you to pass on as message to him.

Momo: “Your risky info might accidentally slip out in a risky place.”

Man: Understood. Please wait a moment.

Momo: ……….

(door opens)

Rough-looking man: Is that him….? Hey, come here.

Rough-looking man: Friend, I can’t have you going too crazy here.

Momo: ...I’ve met a guy who seems to know what’s going on today. Hanging up now.

(phone rings)

Iori: Hello, this is Iori. I’ve received contact from Team 1.

Iori: They were not able to get a confession, but there was a response with regards to Trigger.

Iori: Also, by knowing the real estate owned by the president of Tsukumo, we can narrow the buildings that could be used for confinement down to a potential few.

Iori: There are 11 locations…. It’s a lot, but would it be possible to divide them into groups and check each of them?

Iori: Yes, thank you. If the location can be narrowed down further, they will tell us more information then.

Iori: Finally, it is possible the location is a dangerous place of business, so they want you to take account of the situation carefully from the outside.

Nagi: Okay. Leave it to me. Being a good judge of a situation is my specialty.

Nagi: Hey! This is quite a dirty office!

Passerby: It’s a cram school for learning the abacus. [1]

Yamato: What does he mean by “a dangerous place of business”.... I’m afraid to ask….

Yamato: You guys, from here on, listen to my directions before doing anything.

Sogo: Understood.

Tamaki: Got it.

Yamato: You’re going to get along?!

Sogo: We will, right?

Tamaki: We will.

Mitsuki: There are a lot of possible locations that are all spread out. Well, if Riku’s here, everything’ll be fine!

Riku: Me?!

Mitsuki: Telepathy works between twins, right?

Riku: Telepathy?

Mitsuki: Yeah, between these locations, where could Kujo be? Just say what your gut tells you.

Riku: Will it work…? If it works, that would be amazing! I could be on TV!

Mitsuki: You’re already on TV.

Riku: Umm… Over here!

Mitsuki: Alright! Let’s go!

Anesagi: …. It’s no use just sitting still! I’m going to look for them too...!

Tsumugi: Anesagi-san! But…!

Okazaki: Anesagi-san, it’s better if you stay here.

Anesagi: But…!

Okazaki: Please stay put! It is our job to handle unforeseen circumstances!

Anesagi: Okazaki!

Tsumugi: Okazaki-san… That’s exactly right!

Okazaki: Haha, let’s put on a brave face and all get out of this pinch together!

Okazaki: ...Ah, it’s a Rabbit Chat. Excuse me. What is this? It’s from Yuki-kun...

Okazaki: Eh?! In negotiations with a dangerous person?! What is he doing…? He’s kidding, right? Please tell me he’s kidding.

Tsumugi: I--is everything okay?

Anesagi: Ah, seriously. You actually seemed cool for a moment...

Okazaki: ...Please pass me my stomach medicine… Don’t be “negotiating” with dangerous people… It’ll just end up being a shady deal...

Okazaki: ...eh?! They know Trigger’s whereabouts?!

Anesagi: What did he say…?!

Yuki: He said we can’t negotiate.

Momo: It’s because you told him that it’s a dangerous person. Old man, do you have a business card on you? I’m just going to reach into your jacket real quick.

Rough-looking man: ….. Hey, let go of me! ….

Momo: Here it is! I know your real name, but this business card really does make him seem shady.

Yuki: What if we pretend we didn’t see it?

Momo: Yeah! There’s a printer over there, what if we happened to make this old guy a new business card! What would be a good job title? [2]

Yuki: Illustrator.

Momo: How lovely! Yuki!

Yuki: A polka dotted business card would be nice.

Momo: Since his name is Kumakura, we should put a picture of a bear (kuma) on it! [3]

Rough-looking man: Hey, who are you calling an illustrator?! Hey! Don’t be showing me the layout screen with that smug look on your face! Don’t just put my business card in the shredder without permission!

Yuki: Aren’t you guys the ones doing things without permission to our cherished children?

Yuki: Tell us where they are. If you don’t answer...

Yuki: ...then I’ll resort to negotiations with a striking blow?

Momo: You mean “intimidation.” Redo the line!

Yuki: Sorry. I use the wrong phrase.

Momo: Healthy negotiations with Mr. Kumakura the Illustrator! Take 2!

Yuki: I have a challenge for Mr. Kumakura the Illustrator. Admit that you took those three, and then tell me where they are!

Rough-looking man: Th--these guys…! They’re playing around with me...!

Yamato: This is the first one. From the outside, it’s hard to tell if Trigger is here or not...

(rings doorbell)

Tamaki: Can we come inside?!

Yamato: Why did you ring the doorbell?!

Sogo: Tamaki-kun likes to push the stop button in the bus and call buttons in restaurants too.

Yamato: Could you not say it like your sharing fun stories about your kid?!

Tamaki: Did you want to press it, Yama-san?

Yamato: Of course not, moron!

(door opens)

Rough-looking man: What do you want?

Yamato: Orders from Tsukumo Ryo-san. Did you hear about today? About taking care of a big package.

Rough-looking man: Tsukumo-san’s? Hey, aren’t you guys IDOLiSH7...?

Yamato: Being idols is just a side job. There are benefits to selling your face after all. Hey, are you trying to waste my time?!

Yamato: I am patient, but the youngins behind me aren’t. They must be glaring at you now? Ah?

Sogo: (Should I be glaring...?)

Tamaki: (Like this…?)

Rough-looking man: They do look a bit violent… even though they sing love songs on TV… Okay, Tsukumo-san’s package. I’ll go ask about it.

Yamato: Hey, make it fast.

(door closes)

Yamato: …… Now! Let’s escape.

Sogo: Shouldn’t we wait?

Yamato: His face said he didn’t know anything. If Trigger was inside, when I told him about the “big package,” there would’ve been a sign. Let’s go!

Tamaki: Yama-san, can I ring the doorbell at the next one too?

Yamato: Only if I say it’s okay!!

-end-

Next episode

T/N

1. There are actual cram schools for teaching children how to use an abacus [wikipedia]. They say it activates the right side of the brain in children.

2. Okazaki told them they can’t negotiate with dangerous people. Re:vale is going to give him a new job title and business card, and then he won’t seem like such a dangerous person anymore, and then they can negotiate with him.

3. Kuma is Japanese for “bear (animal).”

(Please do not use my translations without permission. Do not copy & paste them.)

#ainana #my translation #idolish7 #i7

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weekendwarriorblog · 4 years

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

youtube

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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ladyseaheart1668 · 6 years

Text

Endless Summer Fan Novel (Book 1, Chapter 7)

Notes: In non-canon scenes this chapter, Alodia gets flirty over dishes. Also, as encouraging as likes are, I love comments. (Shameless fishing for comments over) :)

Somehow, that night, I manage to eventually fall asleep. When I wake the next morning, Murphy is curled up next to me, kneading me with his paws like a kitten. I stay beside him for a moment, rubbing behind his ears. Then, with a sigh, I push back the blankets. No sense in staying in bed. It won't fix anything. Nnnnnn

I brush my teeth and take a shower. Before dressing, I dry myself thoroughly and change the bandage on the claw marks. They're not bleeding anymore, and there is no sign of infection. I dress and run a comb through my damp hair. I've just finished making the bed when there's a knock at the door. I go to open it, and find Diego outside.

“Hey, Allie. Ready for breakfast?”

“You know I'm always ready for breakfast.” I grab my key and step outside, shutting the door behind me. “Do you think things are going to be cool in there? That fight yesterday was pretty heated...”

“Heh. You made a temperature pun.”

“Oh, hush. It's a serious question.”

He shrugs. “People fight all the time. How could anyone stay mad in a paradise like this?”

“...Maybe you're right.”

We take the elevator down to the restaurant level. The moment I step inside, the tension rolls over me like a wave. Everyone's there, but no one is speaking. The only things on the buffet table are cold bagels and dry cereal. The laughter and banter of yesterday morning are gone. The beach crew sits on one side, with the group who went investigating on the other. Jake and Sean head their respective tables, eyeballing each other icily. Diego sighs.

“...Welp...I was wrong. Come on. Let's get something to eat.”

Jake stands and heads over to the buffet table, cutting in front of me. Sean stands sharply, putting himself in Jake's path.

“And where do you think you're going?”

“Getting myself another bagel, Sergeant Buzzkill,” Jake growls. “Got a problem with that?”

“Not everyone's gotten a bagel yet. Since you're not big on contributing to the team, the least you could do is wait till everyone else has had a turn.”

“What are you, the breakfast police? Get out of my way.”

Sean doesn't budge. “Sit. Your. Ass. Down.”

“Sean!” I snap. “Did I miss an election where we voted you Supreme Leader? Because I don't know why you think you can tell people what they can and can't do! There are plenty of bagels to go around, so why don't you relax and enjoy yours instead of worrying about everyone else?”

Jake smirks. “Well, look at that. Even Princess is on my side. That's how you know you're wrong.”

Sean frowns at you. “Really, Alodia? I thought you were better than this.” But he steps out of the way. Jake continues towards the buffet table.

“Can I grab you a plate, Princess?”

“Sure, thanks.”

“Forget it!” Sean snarls. “I'm going to go see if I can find a working radion in this place. You wanna help me, be my guest.”

Michelle, Grace, and Aleister go with him as he storms out. A leaden silence settles over the rest of us. I manage to get half my bagel down before my appetite leaves me completely. I stand.

“Everything okay, Allie?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I...just need some air. You finish your breakfast.”

“Yeah. Sure...”

With Murphy at my heels, I head out into the courtyard and stand for awhile, breathing in the air. The smell of saltwater mingles with the scent of the jungle's plantlife. I hug myself, trying to calm the anxious tremors running down my body.

“Alodia!” I turn to see Raj bounding over to me. “Hey, can we talk?”

“...What's up?”

“I'm not gonna mince words. I'm worried about our group. If we keep up this whole feud, we're never gonna get off this island. We need a way to come together. I think I might know how to do it. But I'm gonna need your help.”

I nod. “I'm listening.”

“This is going to sound kind of crazy...but we need to throw a feast.”

“A...feast?”

“Look. My grandmother had this saying: Words make war...but pies make peace.”

For a moment, I can only blink at him. “...Raj, that...is genius!”

He grins at me. “You think so? Most people just stare at me confused when I say it.”

“...How...many times have you been in this situation?”

“Oh, you know. That one time at Chi Sigma Alpha...and in my a capella group...oh, and junior prom...Hoo boy, that was a doozy...” He shakes his head. “Look, the point is, I've actually got a lot of experience bringing folks together. And there's nothing that does the job like good food, strong drinks, and a lot of laughs.”

“I am totally sold. So what's the plan?”

“I'll handle the cooking. I was poking around the kitchen earlier, and there is a lot of good stuff in there.”

“What do you need me for?”

“Come on, Alodia. What's the most important thing for a feast?”

“Uh...friendship? Family? A community coming together in unity and support?”

Raj actually facepalms. “Booze, Alodia! Really, really good booze! I need you to hit up every bar in the resort and make sure tonight's party is stocked!”

“Don't we have a bunch of stuff down here already?”

“Well...” He rubs the back of his head. “We've managed to put a surprisingly large dent in that already. But more importantly, you can't just serve your average pool bar swill at a feast like this. We need the top shelf stuff. The crème de la crème. ...Literally. I'd like a bottle of Creme de la Creme.”

“So, you're sending me on a scavenger hunt of all the bars in the resort to get some special booze for you?”

“I knew I could count on you! Now listen, I've got a few drinks in mind that I wanna make, but I'm going to need some specific ingredients. I'm gonna need that Creme de la Creme, a bottle of McLellyn's Whiskey, and a bottle of Armand de Fleur champagne. You got that.”

“Got it.”

He takes my hand between his large palms and looks earnestly into my eyes. “Good luck, Alodia. The fate of the party is on your shoulders.”

I head back into the hotel, aiming to check the directory on the first floor, when someone sidles up beside me.

“Hey there, buddy!” Zahra's voice is just slightly syrupy. “Heard you were going on a bar crawl.”

I stare at her. “Were...were you eavesdropping on me an Raj?”

“You call it eavesdropping, I call it conveniently overhearing while hiding in a corner. To-may-to, to-mah-to. I'm in.”

“...You are?”

“Look, let's just say I'm a pretty experienced drinker, okay? I've got one hell of a discerning palate. You want this to be some run-of-the-mill frat party beer run? Be my guest. But if you wanna come back with the best of the best, I'm your gal.”

Just then, Craig rounds the corner, appearing in front of us.

“What's this I hear about a beer run?”

“Does anyone on this island not eavesdrop on people?!” I cry.

“Come on, Alodia. You're gonna need someone to carry all those bottles. Someone big and strong...”

“Hey!” Zahra protests. “I called going with Alodia first!”

“Yeah, well, I called it second. And everyone knows first is the worst, second is the best!”

“Who?! Who knows that?!”

I press my fingers to my temples. “I'm sorry, could we back up a moment? ...Are you two just trying to get drunk?”

“Yeeeeeeah, A-dogg! You get it!” Craig holds his fist out for a bump, but Zahra slaps his hand away.

“You really need to learn how to read tone, Craig. And yes. We're just trying to get drunk. It's hot. We're stuck on this island. And we're all probably going to get eaten by a sabertooth tiger. Can you blame us?”

“...Well, I guess when you put it like that...” I sigh. “Okay, fine. You can both tag along.”

Both their expressions shift to something that suggests I've asked them to cross Mount Atropo on a tightrope.

“What?!”

“No, that's...”

They look at each other a moment and then sigh simultaneously.

“Fine,” Zahra mutters. “But I still get the first sip.”

“And I get to drink the most!”

I grin wickedly. “See? You two are getting along already. Seems Raj knows what he's talking about. Now come on. Let's get him what he needs.”

We head through the hotel with Murphy trotting eagerly after us. Remembering the vintage wine we discovered on the first day, I lead us to the ballroom first. I throw open the ornate double doors and suddenly stop short, a strangled scream escaping my lips.

...The ballroom is gone. On the other side of the doors is a rickety catwalk over a lake of bubbling, blood-colored magma. Smoke and oppressive heat surround me, choke me, encase my body in a suffocating layer of sweat. I can just barely make out the figure of a man on the far end of the catwalk. ...A man wearing an ornately decorated lion mask...

“Wha...who...?”

He looks at me, cocking his head to the side. Then, man, magma, and catwalk dissolve in a blinding white light.

...I'm back in the hotel ballroom with Craig and Zahra. They're both staring at me.

“...What the hell was that?” I ask dazedly.

“What was what?” Zahra asks.

“You okay, Alodia? You just...totally spaced out there for a second...”

“I...I'm fine. Just got lost in my thoughts for a moment, I guess.” I flash them a bright smile. “Let's go find us some alcohol!”

“This doesn't look like a bar...” Craig remarks, eyeing the wedding decorations skeptically.

“Guessing you haven't been to many fancy weddings. Rich couples go all out on nice wine and champagne.”

“Alodia knows what's up. The two of us came here on the first day, and hoo boy did we find the good stuff.”

“Yeah, well, where I'm from, the only thing they serve at weddings is cheap beer and moonshine.”

“I've always wondered,” Zahra says. “Do you actually drink it out of a jug labled XXX, or is that just a stereotype?”

“Okay, stay on target, you two. We're looking for a champagne called Armand de Fleur.”

“Oooo, I've heard of that,” Zahra says. “I'll give Raj credit, boy knows his booze.”

Craig is already poking through the bar fridge. “And we've got a couple bottles right here!” He pulls out a few bottles and tucks them into his backpack.

“Perfect. Next let's check the re--”

“Hold your horses, Alodia,” Zahra cuts in. “It's not a bar crawl unless you're actually drinking.”

“You know, I don't really recall saying this was a bar crawl...”

But Zahra has already popped open a bottle and taken a sip. “Mmmm. Tastes like horrific wealth disparity.”

“Gimme that!” Craig snatches the bottle from her and takes a swig. “Tastes like champagne. What's the big deal?”

“The big deal is that it's one of the finest, most flavorful champagnes in the world!” Zahra shrieks. “You are such a philistine!”

“Racist much? My family's from Taiwan!”

“How about you, Alodia? Gonna drink?”

I sigh and roll my eyes, but I feel a smile playing around my mouth. “Ah, what the hell. Let's do this.”

“That's what I'm talkin' 'bout, y'all!” Craig passes me the bottle, and I tip it towards him in a toast.

“Cheers!” I put it to my lips and take a good, long swallow. Bubbly sweetness rests on my tongue. I detect a hint of pear and an aftertaste of honey. “Ohhhh, wow, that is good...”

“Another! Another!” Craig cheers.

We pass the bottle around for a couple minutes. As I cast my eyes over the ballroom, the world takes a few seconds to catch up with the motion of my head.

“Ooookay, I am definitely feeling that. We should...check the next bar on our list.” I stand carefully, blinking through the mild alcoholic buzz. “Just don't let me drive there.”

Zahra snorts. “Come on. I know where to go next.”

She leads us through the hotel until we come to a thick double door. A sign hangs on the wall nearby. I read it aloud.

“'Club Skullkid'?”

“The hell is this?”

Craig throws open the doors, and reveals a dazzling, high-end nightclub. Soft velour chairs and benches surround gleaming tables, and the whole place glows with multicolored neon lights.

“Oh, whaaaaaaaaaaaat?” Craig cries. “No one told me there was a nightclub here! Why are we not tearing this place down every night?!”

“Because I can think of no worse way to spend my time than listening to crappy EDM while watching your sweaty ass fumble around?” Zahra mutters.

“Pfft. You're just jealous cuz you don't have my moves.”

Craig does what might be intended as a dance...but he looks more like a spastic bunny rabbit. Zahra rolls her eyes and wanders over to the DJ booth. She scoffs.

“What is this, like, retro night? All this equipment is from the mid-90's. Not to mention the music...”

“Come on, guys. The bar's our target. Should have plenty of cocktail supplies.”

Zahra slides over to the bar and starts rummaging through bottles. “Sure does. We've got blackberry liqueur, absinthe, hot chili vodka...”

“We're looking for Creme de la Creme.”

“Yup. Got some of that, too.”

Craig picks up a bottle and reads the label. “ 'A premiere flavored liqueur with hints of chocolate, vanilla, and a dash of cinnamon.' ” He pops open the bottle and takes a chug. “Gah! So...sweet...and...creamy...”

Zahra shrieks in exasperation. “You're supposed to mix a tiny bit of it into a cocktail, you ape, not chug it like cheap beer!”

“Well, where's the warning label, huh?!”

Zahra sighs. “Just give it to me. I'll show you how it's done.” She swings around the bar and starts mixing. I settle onto one of the valour couches to watch. With a flourish, she slides a tall glass of multicolored booze into Craig's beefy hand. He takes a sip.

“Oooooooooooooooh, yeah. That's good.”

“It better be. There's like, six shots in there.”

“There's no way I'm keeping you two sober, is there?”

“Not a chance in hell,” Zahra agrees. “Want one?”

I sigh. “What the hell. You only live once, right?”

“YOLO, baby!” Craig crows. “I've got that tattooed on my butt!”

“We all remember, Craig,” Zahra mutters.

“I don't! I've never seen Craig's butt!” I catch a cocktail as Zahra slides it down the bar to me and take a sip. “Mmm, delicious. And...incredibly strong.”

Zahra offers me a lopsided grin. “Gotta say, Alodia. You're all right.”

“Uh...thanks?” I swallow the rest of my cocktail in three gulps. “Come on. We've still gotta get that...the whiskey.”

“Sure thing,” Craig says, giving me a thumbs up. “After I finish this cocktail. And the one after that.”

It takes us an hour to get out of the nightclub. Partially because we keep drinking awhile, but mostly because the floor has started to become tippy under my feet. Craig's backpack bulges with clinking bottles.

“Hey, guys? Is one of the island's mysteries that everything is spinning? Or is that just me?”

“Nyah! Craig's drunk!” Zahra drawls. “He's as drunk as a drunk guy who's always drunk and is like, 'Hey! Look at me! I'm drunk!'”

I snort, dissolving into giggles. She blinks at me.

“Um...I'm pretty drunk, too, aren't I.”

I nod, still giggling. “You guys...you guys are...yeah...this was...yeeeeeeeeeeeah. I'm not wordsing good...”

Craig slings an arm over my shoulders. “Alodia's feelin' it, Zahra. Gotta looove this woman!”

I shake my head and give the world a few seconds to catch up. “...I think we'veit ev'ry bar in the rzzort. And we got a lot of alcohol. But we never did fin' that McLellyn's whiskey.”

“Well,” Zahra says. “There is one more bar.”

“There is?”

“Saw it when I washgoin' ov'r the blueprints. Somethin' called the V.I.P. Lounge.”

“V.I.P Lounge?” Craig says. “I didn't see anything about that in the brochure...”

“That's cuz you're not a V.I.P., Dummy. Unless it stands for Vomiting...Idiot...Poo-head...”

He snorts. “Sick burn, Z. Really got me with that one.”

“Juss shut up and follow me.”

She leads us through the halls until we come to a locked door with a keypad in the handle. Zahra scoffs.

“Simple one-source keypad authentication? It's like they want me to break in...”

“Are you sure that's a good idea?”

“Saaaaauuuce,” Craig drawls. “It's the V.I.P. Lounge. You know they've got the best shizz in there.”

“The drunker you get, Craiggers, the more you sound like your old self. Remember that time freshman year when you...when we...” Zahra trails off, frowning. “...nevermind.”

“Less just get inside,” I mutter.

“Yeeeeeeeeah!” Craig yells. “Let's. Break! This! Door! Down!” He rams the door with his massive shoulder, but it stays put. Zahra rolls her eyes.

“You never learn, do you, big guy?” She pries open the keypad panel, examining the wires. “Alodia, keep Craig busy. I gotta work my magic.”

“Are you sure you oughta be doing that drunk?”

“Meh, what's the worst that could happen? I trip the wrong wire and 10000 volts of electricity surge through my body, leaving you idiots screaming at the charred husk that is my corpse?”

“...Craig, is she kidding? I can't tell if she's kidding.”

“I can never tell with her,” Craig says resignedly.

Zahra squints, focusing on the wires. A single drop of sweat trickles down her forehead as she mutters to herself.

“Okay...red to green...watch the breaker...careful...careful...aaaand...” There is a spark, and the doors slide open. “Aw, yeah! Slap my ass and call me Snape, 'cause I just worked some magic!”

My drunk brain won't let me hold a straight face. I break down in a fit of ungraceful giggles. Zahra glares at me.

“Tell anyone I said that, I will kill you both.”

I bite my cheek and nod, but I can still feel the smile tugging at my mouth.

The V.I.P Lounge lives up to its name. From the guilded marble fountain at the center of the room to the fancy gold curtains to the LCD screens and the glass case behind the bar that displays top-shelf alcohol.

I whistle, going to sit down on one of the couches. Murphy hops up beside me and settles onto my lap. “Good call, Zahra. This was totally worth it.”

“Uh, duh! Let's see what's this places got!” She steps towards the bar, but ends tripping over a chair and sprawling onto a couch. “On second thought...Imma juss lie here for a li'l while. If someone could just pour a drink into my mouth, that'd be swell...”

Craig makes it over to the bar. “Lessee what they got here. Some nice-ass vodka...like a crystal ball full of gin...and down in the fridge...” He lets out a whoop. “A cheese tray! Oh hells yeah, they've got a cheese tray!”

“Wait, Craig, you don't know how old it is. Maybe you should--” I stop when I hear him gulping noisily. “...Never mind.”

“Mmm...colby-jack.”

“Don't bother, Alodia. Craig's a human garbage disposal. One time freshman year, he ate a candy bar he'd dropped in a public hot tub.”

“The water's hot!” Craig retorts. “That means it's sterile!”

Zahra balks, sputtering for a moment. “Who taught you science?!” she finally shrieks.

“So...you guys knew each other freshman year?”

Instantly, there is a palpable shift in the mood in the room. Zahra and Craig glance uneasily at each other.

“We...uh...well...you know...”

“I mean...there was...”

I look between the two of them, putting two and two together.

“Wait...were you two a couple?”

“What?!” Craig yelps. “No! No no no! Definitely not! What a crazy thing to say!”

Zahra rolls her eyes. “Oh my god, Craig. Don't have a hernia. Yeah, we hooked up a few times. What's the big deal?”

“I thought you didn't want anyone to know.”

“Yeah, well, maybe sometimes I just don't have the energy to lie about it.”

“Huh. I gotta admit, I have a hard time picturing you two together.”

“Yeah, well,” Zahra sighs, “we were different people back then, just two dorky freshmen with no idea what to do...stuck in the same hall...”

Craig sits down next to Zahra, handing her a scotch on the rocks. They tap their glasses together.

“You had that long blonde ponytail, remember? And you always wore that nerdy pony sweater.”

“Yeah, well, you were a total dork. You had glasses and a bowlcut and all you ever talked about was World of Warcraft...”

“Please! Like you didn't totally make a character just to we could raid Scholomance together.”

“...I forgot all about that,” Zahra admits softly. “We wasted so many hours together...”

“Yeah...”

She scowls. “But then your stupid football team started winning, and you and Sean became kings of the school. And all you wanted to do was go to frat parties with perky little cheerleaders.”

“You coulda come with me, you know,” Craig says sullenly. “But no. You just wanted to hang out with those creepy hackers in the CS department.”

“At least they listened to me. They got what I had to say.” She sighs deeply. “...You think our Warcraft characters still exist? Just waiting around on some dusty server, remembering the good times?”

“They're probably pretty lonely.”

They sit in silence for a long time. I curl up on a couch and watch their faces until Zahra stands up and scrubs at her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Sun's setting,” she mutters. “We should probably get back to Raj.”

“Yeah,” Craig agrees, getting to his feet. “Time to go.”

I stand as well. “Hang on a sec. Let's see if we can find that whiskey Raj wanted.” I make my way over to the shelf, scanning the labels. “Here it is. McLellyn's.”

I grab a couple of bottles and stuff them into Craig's backpack. I am zipping it up when something catches my eye.

“Huh...that's weird...”

“What's up?”

I pick up a half-full glass of whiskey sitting on the bar on top of a small paper napkin.

“Everything else is neatly put away. What's this doing here? It's like someone was here after the bar closed. Just...having a drink by themselves.” I take an experimental sip. “...Unless this is incredibly weak whiskey, it was on the rocks...but the rocks melted.”

Murphy, sitting on one of the stools, puts his paws up on the bar, raises his hackles, and growls at the glass.

“Spooky!” Zahra drawls. “Maybe it was a ghoooooooooost!”

“There's something written on a piece of paper here...” I pick it up and squint at it. “ 'Project Hermes activation codes. Utilizes satellite uplink at the L.H.O.'...And then a bunch of random numbers and letters. Anyone know what this means?”

“No idea. Now come on. Let's get out of here before it gets sentimental in here again.”

I snort. “Yeah. I thought Diego was a sappy drunk.”

I split off from Zahra and Craig and make my way to the kitchen, Craig's backpack on my shoulders. The heavy bottles clink loudly as I walk. As soon as I enter the kitchen, I am nearly overwhelmed by a dozen intoxicating smells. I inhale deeply.

“Oh, my God! Raj, it smells delicious! What are you making here?”

Raj pops up from behind the counter, wiping his hands on his apron.

“There's kahlua pork on the grill, fries in the fryer, oysters are ready to go, and the samosas are stuffed and spiced.”

Murphy yips excitedly and scampers around the kitchen, greedily licking scraps off the floor.

“Slow down, fella. You don't want to get sick before the feast! Here.” I hold out the bag to Raj. “Your booze, oh master chef.”

Raj comes to take the bag. “Tell me you got the good stuff.” He opens the bag and looks through its contents. “All right, Alodia! You got everything!”

“I take my job as booze brigadier very seriously.”

“I knew I was right to count on you!” He sniffs the air curiously, leaning forward. He grins. “You sample the goods on your way back?”

“Not on the way back,” I say with a syrupy grin. “But I might've had a sip. Or two. Or three. ...Looks like you've got things handled down here, though.”

“Well, I had some help.”

He nods at a spot behind me. I look over my shoulder and see Quinn vigorously stirring something in a bowl.

“Quinn!”

“Yeah. She offered to help. She's an amazing cook.”

“Nah, I've just been following instructions. This feast is all Raj.”

Raj grins. “Aw, thanks. Now, I'm going to work on the set-up out by the pool. Everything's on a timer, so don't worry about a thing, Quinn. You just keep on with what you're doing, and I'll be back in a bit.”

He starts to leave, then pauses by the door. “Hey...Alodia. You're keeping track of all the crazy stuff on this island, aren't you?”

“Uh...kinda, I guess...”

“Maybe this isn't a big deal, but I did find one weird thing in the kitchen.” He holds out a frying pan. “All the other frying pans are normal. But this one had a...symbol on it...”

I take the pan and examine the symbol etched into the bottom. My stomach does a flip-flop. Still heady from my multiple cocktails, I can't be sure...but I think I've seen it before. Crude archery arrows with a couple extra legs...

“I don't know why,” Raj says, “But something about that symbol...it really stands out to me. Feels important for some weird reason. Like it's calling out to me. ...I sound crazy, don't I?”

“Yeah...” I admit. “But everything about this island is crazy.” I pull my phone out of my pocket and snap a quick picture.

Raj chuckles. “Touche. You see anything else like that, you'll let me know?”

“Sure thing.”

He heads out. I slip my phone back in my pocket and turn to Quinn.

“How's it going here?”

“Great! I'm working on dessert now.” She gestures in front of her, to the trays of fluffy cupcakes lining the countertop. “Wanna stick around and help? I could always use an extra pair of hands.”

“Count me in!” I say eagerly. “Though...I should warn you, I'm a little drunk.”

She giggles. “I don't need you sober to frost cupcakes.”

She smiles sweetly at me, blue eyes sparkling. Her cheeks are high with color from the heat in the kitchen. For a moment, I can only look back with what feels like a very goofy smile on my face. She tips her head at me.

“Just gonna stand there staring?” She pats the counter beside her. “Come around to my side.”

I don't hesitate to do as she tells me. I look over the trays of cupcakes, trying to count them, and giving up at twenty.

“Think we've got enough?”

“Well, at this rate, we've got four apiece.”

I shake my head with a grin. “Except I'm a six-cupcake kinda gal.”

She laughs. “Well, I've always said there are only two certain truths in this world. We're all gonna die, and you can never have too many cupcakes.”

“Kind of a good-news, bad news kind of scenario, huh?”

“Exactly. Well, I've got enough batter for another dozen or so. But in the meantime, it's time for the most important part of baking any cupcakes.”

“The eating?”

“...Okay, the second most important part. The frosting! What do you think we should go with?”

“Vanilla. No question.”

“Oh, interesting. I never pegged you for the traditional type.”

“What can I say? I like my burgers warm, my drinks cold, and my cupcakes vanilla.”

“Well, you're in luck. This place has the fanciest, creamiest, most incredible vanilla frosting I've ever tasted.”

She opens the cabinet and takes out two jars of frosting. The two of us get to work, using rubber spatulas to smooth the soft white frosting over the rounded tops of the cupcakes. Quinn applies the frosting with a practiced hand, creating elegant mounds.

“You bake a lot?”

“I used to when I was younger. My mom and I were home a lot, so we used to spend the whole day in the kitchen, whipping up pies and souffles and gigantic trays of cupcakes.” She smiles down at the cupcake she's frosting. “My dad would come home from work, and he'd pretend like he was so flustered every time. 'Darn it, you two! Where's my steak and potatoes! A man can't live on cupcakes alone!' ...Then when we weren't looking, he'd stuff himself silly.”

“Sounds like you had a pretty great childhood.”

“...Yeah...parts of it were...”

I apply the last stroke to my half of the cupcake pile and turn to her with a grin. “So...does the Frosting Assistant get a free sample?”

“Only because you were so cute when you asked.”

She hands me the cupcake she has just finished. I take a large bite. Fluffy sweetness fills my senses. The frosting melts across my tongue, blending with the soft, warm cake into a mush that is just sweet enough without being overpowering. I push the mush against the roof of my mouth with my tongue, savoring it before it dissolves and slides down my throat.

“That...might just be the best cupcake I've ever eaten.”

“Might be? Oh, no. That was definitely the best cupcake you've ever eaten.”

I laugh. “Okay, okay. If we had internet here, I would totally write Quinn's Cupcakes a five-star review.”

“When I was a kid, I dreamed of opening my own bakery. It was going to be called For Goodness Cake, and we'd serve nothing but cupcakes.”

“And would you personally bake every single one?”

“For you? Absolutely.” She turns to me with a smile. “Thank you for helping, Alodia. This was fun.”

Her smile makes me feel dreamy. “...Yeah...yeah, it was.”

Our eyes lock. For a moment, a delicate silence hangs over us. ...I realize what's about to happen only seconds before it does. I capture her open lips with mine, tracing the inside of her mouth with my vanilla-coated tongue. She winds her arms around me, slipping her hands under my shirt. I press forward, sliding her up onto the counter. My hand creeps under her shirt, drifting up to cup her breast. She moans softly against my mouth and I feel her legs wrap around me, pulling my hips against hers. I bite her lower lip gently, then let my mouth journey down her neck towards her collarbone. She arches her head back, grinding her hips against me.

“Oh, God...Alodia...”

“...Quinn...”

We're moving faster now as the hunger takes us. She tugs off my shirt and reaches under my bra to grip my breast. I unbotton her blouse and pull it open. Her mouth meets mine again. I slip the button of her shorts out of the buttonhole and tug down the zipper.

“What if someone sees us?” I murmur against her lips. Even as I ask the question, I'm slipping my hand into her shorts.

“I don't care,” she answers, gasping as my hand starts to move against her pubis. Her hips rise. “Oh, god...don't stop...”

“Not a chance in hell.” I move faster, grinning as she moans with pleasure.

There's a bang as the door swings open and Raj sweeps back in.

“Hey, guys. Just wanted to see how it was--” He cuts himself off with a yelp when he sees us. “Oh! Oh God! I didn't realize you two were...I didn't mean to...sorry!”

He turns and flees, leaving me and Quinn frozen.

From just outside, we hear Raj call, “I know you're supposed to cook with love, but I don't think they meant it so literally!”

Quinn and I lock eyes and dissolve into giggles. I ease my hand out of her shorts and help her off the counter.

“Oh, god...did you see his face?”

“I've never seen him so flustered!” She collapses against me, weak with laughter.

“We...should probably catch up with him...see if he needs any help with the party...”

“Yeah...we should...” She slides one hand down the back of my jeans and cups my buttock. “...in a few minutes...”

I grin, running my hands along her ribs. That's when I catch sight of the long, pale scar running the length of the right side of her torso. I pause for a moment, trailing my fingers along it.

When she realizes what I'm touching, she pulls back slightly, averting her eyes. “...Oh...that...it's weird, huh?”

I grin wryly. “No weirder than the ones I'm gonna have,” I say, touching the bandage over the claw wounds on my own ribs. “...How did you get it?”

“Surgery. I was in the hospital a lot growing up. But I'm better than ever now.”

Still, she tugs her blouse closed, hastily doing up the buttons.

“It's nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“Oh, I'm not embarrassed. Actually, I kinda like it. It reminds me how, no matter what, I'm not going to let anything stop me from living my life.”

I smile at her. “...It's beautiful, Quinn. Really, it is.”

“...You're beautiful, Alodia. ...Should we go catch up with Raj? Or...?” Her eyes twinkle mischeivously. She slips one button back open.

I can still feel desire swirling in my belly, still feel fluttering between my legs. But another desire is overpowering it. I pull her into my arms, cradling her head against my shoulder.

“...Let's stay like this. Just for a few minutes.”

***

As evening falls, Raj calls us all out to the pool. A party playlists blasts out of the speakers, and tiki torches set up around the pool flicker with a beautiful ambient light. Two long tables have been pushed together and draped with a floral-printed oil tablecloth. And the length of the table is filled with a magnificant feast. I can smell sizzling roast pork, savory sauces, juicy fruits, and sweet desserts.

“Holy crap!” I cry. “I thought it smelled good in the kitchen!”

Diego laughs. “Allie, you're drooling.”

“Can I eat it all now? Please?”

Raj bounds over to us, grinning like a maniac. “I can't throw a ball or fly a plane, but you'd better believe I can cook a mean feast.”

I put my hands on his shoulders. “Eat. Now. Please.”

“Have a seat, everyone, and dig in.”

Diego and I make our way to the table, where most everyone is already seated. I slide into a seat beside Grace. I glance around the table, and my heart sinks a little as I realize that except for Diego and I, the table is still split with Jake's group on one side and Sean's on the other. Still, as we start in on the feast, tensions on our end of the table start to thaw.

“Ohhhh, goodness,” Grace sighs happily. “These coconut shrimp are divine.”

“You should try the pork,” Michelle says. “Raj really outdid himself.”

I murmur my agreement around a mouthful of cinnamon-dusted Caribbean fruit salad. I glance down at the other end of the table, where Sean and Jake sit across from each other. It seems that the closer it gets to that end of the table, the more tension remains.

“Pass the fries,” Sean demands.

“Grab 'em yourself,” Jake shoots back.

I look around for Raj, hoping he didn't hear that. But I don't see him. Then suddenly, he reappears, pushing a cart filled with drinks in a variety of glasses. As he makes his way around the table, placing one in front of each of us, I realize that no two people have been given the same drink. In front of me is something red in a champagne flute, topped with cherries and blackberries. Diego has something dark in a sugared martini glass.

Aleister eyes the greenish substance in his brandy glass warily. “Dare I ask what is happening here?”

“I have brought every single person a signature drink!” Raj replies. “One that I think is right for just them. Alodia found all the ingredients.”

“With a little help from some friends,” Zahra adds.

“Can we drink now?” Craig asks. “I wanna drink!”

“Dude, how?” Zahra groans. “It's taking every ounce of willpower I have not to yuke on the floor.”

“We can drink in a sec,” Raj promises. “But first, let me make a toast. Right now, we're sitting at this table, and every single one of us is holding a completely different drink. That's not just because I like mixing up cocktails. It's also a pretty good metaphor. When you look at us from a distance, we all look pretty different. And on the surface, we are. Jocks and nerds, hackers and bullies...well, you'd think none of us have anything in common.”

“...Who's the bully?” Craig asks.

Raj ignores him. “But that's just the surface, just the glass. Because deep inside, these drinks all have a lot in common. They're delicious. They're full of alcohol. And they were all made for one important purpose: to bring us together again.

“We all want to get off this island. We all want to get back to our homes, our families, our lives. But we're never going to accomplish that unless we can overcome our superficial difference and work together as a group. The fact is, everyone here has a role to play. Some of us are natural leaders, confident and assertive. Others are rebels, who test boundaries and find new solutions. Some of us are quiet, studying the way the world works. Others are loud and strong and they keep us all safe. And some of us...well, some of us are insanely cute blue foxes with crazy ice powers.”

Murphy trills happily from my lap. I hold up a piece of pork for him, which he eagerly snaps up.

“If we keep fighting,” Raj continues, “if we keep focusing on our differences, we're going to tear each other apart. But if we come together, if we focus on what we have in common, we can figure this mystery out. We can get off this island. And we can go home with a memory of the most amazing adventure of our lives. So what do you guys say? Can we come together for a toast?”

The table is quiet for a moment. Then, Sean raises his glass towards Jake.

“...To coming together.”

Jake is still for a moment. Then, he raises his own glass and taps it against Sean's.

“...To getting back home.”

I raise my own glass. “To Raj!”

He grins at me. “Aww, thanks, Alodia.”

All together, we raise our glasses and drink.

“Thank you for putting this together, Raj,” Sean says. “We needed it.”

“Yeah,” Jake agrees. “This...this was nice.”

At last, all the tension that has gripped our group since last night finally dissolves. We're as lighthearted and jovial as on that first morning, sharing stories and telling jokes. Soon, we begin discussing the events of the day.

“So, Shooter, any luck radioing for help?”

“Not so much,” Sean admits. “Every radio signal I try just brings back static. It's like we're trapped in some kind of communication bubble.”

“It's clear this island is cut off from traditional communication channels. We'd need something more sophisticated.”

“Grace and I believe a satellite uplink could be a strong enough signal to get through the interference,” Aleister says.

“Wait...did you say a satellite uplink?” I ask. “I saw a note about that earlier today in the V.I.P. Lounge. It said there was a satellite uplink at some place called the L.H.O.”

“L.H.O...” Lila repeats thoughtfully. Then, she gasps. “The La Huerta Observatory! That does make sense. The Observatory is a state-of-the-art facility, with direct contact to Mr. Rourke's satellite relay. ...But we still don't know where the observatory is...”

“Uh...” Jake puts up a hand. “Would this be a good time to mention that when I was jet-skiing yesterday, I saw a big domed building with a giant telescope? Maybe seven miles north of here, up high on the slopes of the volcano.”

Stunned silence descends over the table. Diego finally breaks it.

“...I think we just figured out what we need to do next.”

***

The mood shifts after we realize our next move. But though the festive atmosphere dies down, the determination and purpose in the group now is invigorating. We all agree to get some rest and regroup in the morning to come up with a plan. Before going to bed, I help Raj wrap up the leftovers and put them into the fridge. Yawning, he suggests we leave the dishes until morning, but once he's gone, I start loading the dishes into the kitchen's three industrial dishwashers. Murphy finds a dry corner of the kitchen to curl up in and take a nap.

“Hey. Need a hand?”

I look up and find Sean standing in the door of the kitchen, smiling at me. I smile back.

“Wouldn't say no.”

He comes over and picks up a plate, using the knife and fork to scrape the remains into the garbage disposal.

“Seems like this could have waited until morning. You must be exhausted.”

I shrug. “I can't leave dirty dishes in the sink. It's like a pathological condition. Just ask Diego what I nightmare I am about dishes in our apartment. I can leave dirty dishes in the dishwasher, but if there are any in the sink, then I am probably seriously ill.”

He laughs. “Duly noted. If I ever visit your apartment and find dirty dishes in the sink, I'll call an ambulance.”

I snort, rinsing out a bowl before tucking it into the dishwasher. Sean is quiet for a moment.

“...Listen, Alodia...I'm sorry about what I said earlier.”

“...What did you say earlier?”

“At breakfast. When you told me to let Jake get a bagel and I said I thought you were better than that. I'm sorry for that. And all it implied.”

“...Oh. Well, I accept you're apology. But I was never really angry about that.”

“No...I kinda gathered you were angry with me before you accused me of acting like I was elected Supreme Leader.”

“That...might have been a little harsh of me.”

“Well, I was probably overreacting. ...Something about Jake seems to put my teeth on edge.”

“You have been pretty hard on him. ...And by extension, anyone who associated with him. That's why I was angry with you. You may have been directing your anger at Jake yesterday, but you were implicity yelling at my best friend, too.”

“...And mine.”

“Well, Craig might have deserved it,” I admit. “But Diego didn't, all right? And neither did Quinn, or Jake for that matter. Quinn almost drowned before we got out of that shelter. Would you really fault her for wanting to relax and forget for a little while?”

“I suppose not...”

“And for all you accuse him of lying around and not helping, I don't think any of us would have left that shelter alive if not for Jake.”

“...Alodia...”

“I know he comes across all gruff and misanthropic, but I think there is more to Jake than you give him credit for.”

“What makes you say that?”

I pause for a moment, considering the question. Finally, I shrug. “People are complicated, Sean. There is more to most people than what meets the eye. Look...I've known a lot of people who put up fronts. Goofy fronts, grumpy fronts, even kind fronts. ...Or brave, noble fronts. First impressions are rarely the whole truth of a person.”

Sean is silent for a long moment. “...So...what's your story, Alodia?”

“...My story?”

“...I've seen you on campus, you know. I've noticed you.”

“...You have?”

“Yeah. ...I remember when I first saw you. Last fall, third game of the season. I was warming up on the field, and you were with the dance team, setting up a table on the sidelines.”

“Right...the dance team decided to sell bratwurst at the football games last fall as a fundraiser.”

“Yeah. ...And you were showing off some pretty impressive moves. I remember wondering why you weren't in a cheerleading uniform.”

I make a face. “Because all I would be doing then is cheering on the football team on the sidelines. I'd rather be center stage or competing myself.”

He chuckles. “Hey, no disrespect. You probably deserve to be center stage.”

“...So...you actually noticed me?”

“Yeah. ...And then I realized you were in my European history class.”

“Well, I am a history major.”

“I know. ...Alodia Chandler. History major, member of the dance team, and best friend of one Diego Ortiz Soto.”

“Those are my basic stats, yes.”

“Yeah, that's what I could find out by casually asking around.”

“...I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't really know who you were before this trip...”

“Hey, I'm not mad or hurt. ...A little impressed, I admit...”

“...Yeah. I've since managed to gather that you're the star of the school. I...guess I didn't really have much reason to notice the football players...”

“So, who do you tend to notice?”

“Um...I don't know...people who put themselves in front of me, I guess.” I shrug. “...That probably makes me sound pretty self-centered, but...my world is pretty small. I don't actively push people away or anything, and people seem to like me. But getting close to me takes time. ...The easiest way to make friends with me is to get thrown in a metaphorical jar with me and shaken up.”

“Sounds like an easy way to become your enemy, too.”

“Well, yeah.” I waggle my eyebrows at him. “That's a risk you take if you decide to throw yourself into my jar.”

“Well...at least it sounds like getting stuck on this island might work to my advantage in one way. If I actually have an opportunity to get a little closer to you.” At my startled glance, he seems to realize what he just said. He clears his throat. “I mean...get to know you better.”

“Yeah...”

He is silent for a long moment.

“...Maybe that's why I got so worked up over Jake.”

“What's why?”

“Jealousy. I see now he's put himself in front of you. Got himself noticed. Guiding you through the shelter...saving you from the exploding plane...basically being your hero...”

“Does that idea appeal to you? Because frankly, I'm not hoping to meet another sabertooth tiger or exploding plane...”

“No, Alodia. I'm not wishing any danger on you. That's the last thing I want.”

“...You don't have to save me from anything to get yourself noticed. I'm noticing you now.”

He grins. “As I save you from mental strife at the thought of a sink full of dirty dishes.”

“Okay, I admit that's pretty heroic.”

“...Alodia...when all this is over...when we get home...I'd like to see about taking you out sometime.”

It's my turn to be silent for awhile. I think of Quinn and our escapades in the kitchen, though somehow they aren’t enough to make me turn him down on the spot. I have to admit I am surprised to think he might be jealous of Jake. I can’t deny that the pilot is attractive, of course. And I suppose he and I do seem to be on the same page most of the time, but I would chalk that up to us having similar personalities more than anything. On the other hand, Diego seems to think Jake is into me, and he isn’t often wrong about that sort of thing...

“...We'll see, okay, Sean?” I say at last. “...I know it wasn't that long ago that you and Michelle broke up.”

“...True...”

“And in the meantime, we've got to think about getting off this island. But...when this is all over, and we're back home...” I smile at him. “I'm guessing I won't mind if you take me out sometime.”

* * *

We finish the dishes and ride the elevator together up to the penthouse floor. We say goodnight and head into our rooms. Murphy follows at my heels, immediately jumping up onto my bed. Between the food, drinks, and the dizzying conversation with Sean over the dishes, I am surprised by my ability to shower, put on pajamas, and brush my teeth. But there is one more thing that I still manage to do before dropping off.

I pull out my phone and load up the picture I took of the frying pan Raj showed me. Then I pull out the dossiers I had hidden under my mattress. When I look at Raj's page, my heart begins to pound.

...The sigal stamped on his page is the same that was on the frying pan.

I turn my eyes towards the window. Suddenly, I feel exposed. Vulnerable. I leap out of bed and yank the curtains closed, but the feeling does not subside. Somehow, I feel certain that someone or something is out there, watching me.

#Endless Summer #pixelberry choices #choices stories you play #play choices #Diego Ricardo Ortiz Soto #jake mckenzie #quinn kelly #sean gayle #estela montoya #raj bhandarkar #craig hsiao #aleister rourke #michelle nguyen #zahra namazi #grace hall

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theliberaltony · 7 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

If you’re looking for someone to teach you the dark arts of opposition research, Alan Huffman is your man. A former daily news reporter and a political researcher for, by his count, more than 100 candidates, Huffman is the co-author of “We’re With Nobody,” a look inside the “oppo” industry.

That industry once aimed to stay out of the spotlight but now finds itself at center stage. Amid swirling questions and investigations into how campaigns obtain negative information on their opponents, recent reports on organizations linked to both Democrats and Republicans in 2016 have drawn attention and criticism.

A lawyer representing Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee reportedly paid a group called Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research, and that group hired former British spy Christopher Steele to dig up dirt on Donald Trump. (Fusion GPS had also worked with Republican interests during the 2016 primaries.) Steele’s salacious dossier of allegedly compromising information gathered by the Russians — much of it unproven and denied by Trump — was eventually leaked to the media. Complicating matters further are accusations that Steele paid sources to get information. And it has been reported that a company that consulted for Trump’s campaign, Cambridge Analytica, had reached out in 2016 to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange about exploiting emails from Democrats that Russia had allegedly hacked and passed on to WikiLeaks. Assange said he rebuffed the company’s requests.

We asked Huffman, who has worked with candidates from both major parties but mostly works with Democratic campaigns, to help us understand how campaigns and the media use opposition research, and how to interpret the latest revelations. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Hilary Krieger: Could you start by telling us a bit about the history of opposition research — how it developed and evolved?

Alan Huffman: People have been doing oppo for centuries. It’s just what you do: You try to find out the strengths and weaknesses of your opponent. I don’t really know when it sort of morphed into also finding out your own strengths and weaknesses. But the attacks that were made on political candidates go back to the origins of the country.

The process of getting that information sort of stayed submerged until really the last decade or so, maybe the last two decades, because when we [Huffman and research partner Michael Rejebian] first started doing it, the candidates were all really paranoid about anyone finding out. You know, like your opponent’s going to hold a press conference and say, “My opponent has hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on me.” But everybody knows that it’s done now.

Krieger: So can you give me an example from hundreds of years ago? Do you have any great stories of somebody like Thomas Jefferson doing oppo?

Huffman: I remember even back in the Roman days that it was not unusual for the Senate to dig up dirt on opponents — sometimes with violent results. [Huffman later emailed to relate a story that Rejebian wrote about in their book: “One case of early American oppo came during the 1800 presidential election between incumbent John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the latter of whom reportedly hired a ‘scandalmonger’ named James Callender, who had previously revealed a romantic tryst between Alexander Hamilton and a married woman, to research (and promote) an allegation that Adams for some reason wanted to go to war with France. Callender was subsequently jailed for sedition, and after Jefferson was elected, Callender sought a job as a postmaster. When he didn’t get the job, he publicly disclosed his arrangement with Jefferson, along with allegations that he’d dug up about Jefferson and his slave children.”]

Krieger: You said things changed about a decade or two ago.

Huffman: We started doing this in the early ’90s, and I would say probably toward the later ’90s is when it sort of came out into the open. I don’t think it was directly a result of this, but it coincided with all the Bill Clinton scandals. I think at that point, there was no point in pretending that this was all just civil discourse.

Krieger: So while the labors of opposition researchers have become more public since then, has the process itself stayed pretty much the same?

Huffman: What has changed about the process is really the advent of the internet infiltrating into every sector. We still have to go on the ground, but not for as long, usually, because some of the records are available online. So much is now recorded on social media.

But the overall process is still the same because we’ll talk to anybody. We sit down with some guy that seems a little bit crazy, who’s sitting outside of his trailer with a shotgun across his lap because he thinks somebody is going to kill him for talking to you. Maybe he has something and maybe he doesn’t, but we’ll talk to anybody so long as it leads to documentation — and it’s worthless for our purposes if it doesn’t.

Krieger: What are the kinds of things you do to get this information? Are there dirty tricks involved?

Huffman: Michael and I are both trained as journalists, and we approach all of this the same way we would if we were writing for a publication. So, no, there are no dirty tricks on our end, but there are sometimes things that are directed at us. We get death threats, we get followed, all kinds of things like that happen — which just serves the purpose of telling us that we’re getting warm. We like it when that happens because it tells us that we’re on the trail of something that somebody is afraid of.

People think of opposition researchers like political operatives — they are a sort of tool of the political machine — but in general they’re outsiders. And I can’t tell you how many times we’ve sat down with the candidates after we gave them the report, and he or she has said, “Whose side are you on? I look worse than my opponent in your report.”

We’re like, “Sorry, we’re not going to gloss over anything.” We’re also not going to encourage them to use something that sort of goes beyond the boundaries of what we consider our purpose, which is to document the fitness of a candidate to serve, ultimately. Sometimes that might be found in their divorce case records. But in general, we might look at all that stuff, but using it almost always backfires on someone unless it’s just really, really damning. Of course, now, with the way the whole political discourse is changing, who knows what will backfire or what people will just ignore. Trump has just changed the playing field for everybody.

Krieger: Can you spell out your process a bit more?

Huffman: We’ll start out like everyone else, I guess. Initially we just start doing manic googling and find out everything that we can about them. Then we’ll do an exhaustive Lexis Nexis search and see what’s been published. Basically you just build kind of a work outline and see what are the big issues here.

If you’re an incumbent, we’re going to look at, what is your voting history, what comments have you made that are telling in any way. And we’re going to look at whether you pay your taxes. Sometimes that leads you to interesting places. Sometimes it leads to clear wrongdoing.

Krieger: What are some of the information sources that are publicly available that people might not know to think about?

Huffman: Really anything that is public record, we’re going to look at. If we go to the courthouse, I always stop and just look at the building directory and look at every single office in that building. I think, is there anything that they keep that might be illuminating? The permit office, for example, if the guy’s a big developer or landlord. We just kind of go through the whole list every single time.

You customize it with what you know about the candidate, but you’re going to look at their personal voting history. At the county and city level, you’re going to look at all the criminal records. You’re going to look at whether they got a bunch of speeding tickets, and if so, does it make any difference? Is there something else that makes that notable?

You’re going to look at all the court cases. If there were minutes to meetings that they were a part of, you’re going to look at those — and fall asleep with your head on the table.

Once you’ve done the initial documentary research, you’re going to talk to any sources that you can that might just enlighten you about this candidate. And again, it’s always in the hopes that it will direct you toward documentation. So you might not know that there had been suspicious fires at a number of businesses owned by this candidate. It had never been reported in the news, but somebody who worked in the kitchen of the restaurant will tell you that. Then you can go back and find the records that you otherwise would not have known to look for. So it’s very important to talk to people.

And that’s what I thought about when I was looking at this whole issue of the dossier and whether we would have done that. We don’t normally deal with spies. But we will talk to just about anyone as long as it leads to documentation.

Krieger: What do you make of the dossier, the information in it, how it was obtained?

Huffman: You know, you hear a lot of things, and you might even take note of them, but there’s a lot in the dossier apparently that is undocumented, just as there’s a lot that’s documented. It’s such a complicated story that it’s hard to tell exactly what was going on. A Republican starts the process and then the Democrats pick it up, which is not as unusual as it sounds.

Krieger: You saw the dossier get into the media. So how does that part of the process work?

Huffman: That’s something that I have limited knowledge about because in some cases when we turn in the report, that’s the end of it for us. You know the campaign has no interest in us whatsoever from that point on, and we have no control over what they do. If we think there are red flags, we will note that in the report. But then again, in most cases they don’t use it at all. They just like knowing.

Krieger: When you see information you may have gathered wind up in the media, do you think that there’s any issue with how that information is reported on? Is it standard practice for journalists to say that this was provided by a campaign as opposition research? Are there any sort of standards of transparency?

Huffman: There are no established standards. It really falls on the journalist to be responsible for the source of their information. Whether or not the person who shared that information with the journalist explains how it came about, I think most journalists would know that this is clearly the result of somebody doing oppo. But to the journalist it’s a question of: Does it matter if it’s a partisan document as long as it’s also true? The whole point is to get the truth out there, so yes, it may be questionable who has what agenda. But if it’s public record, you just saved them some time. If I was a reporter and something got leaked to me, I would say, “Yeah this was leaked to me.” But you may have an agreement that you’re not going to say who.

One thing that sort of came out and that kind of gave me pause when thinking about this dossier story is the whole issue of buying information, which is sort of antithetical to us and to journalists. If somebody came to us and said, “We will sell you this,” we would automatically be suspicious and skeptical.

Krieger: Should journalists be more up-front about where they’re getting this information?

Huffman: If there’s any issue about it, about how you came to possess this information and if it came from someone who had been involved in [gathering] it somehow, I think a reporter should definitely be up-front about it and not pretend that this all just magically fell into place. And I think that one of the problems now in journalism is there’s not nearly as much focus on documentation as there once was.

Those are the bigger problems, and I hate to sound like a broken record, but it just all goes back to documentation. If you don’t have it, then you don’t have anything. Unfortunately, that’s our view, and it’s not necessarily the way it works. I mean, look at Trump. He’ll say anything, and he gets the media coverage and he creates this whole weather system that is based on nothing. And so somehow the idea of having documented facts begins to feel a little quaint. But that’s what we traffic in, for better or worse.

Krieger: We were talking about the dossier and how that was compiled. What about Cambridge Analytica reaching out to WikiLeaks for information?

Huffman: We would never deal with a Russian operative because they’re basically an enemy of the state and we’re Americans. And I would be very wary about anything that had been stolen. I would look at [the emails] for sure. I would read them and I would see what I could find that could guide my questions when I interview someone and ultimately lead to some proof of what happened. But the provenance of the documents is important.

Krieger: Putting the WikiLeaks example in the context of the norms of how these things work, does it seem like a really different scale of magnitude, or is it just sort of the next step in getting what information you can?

Huffman: It is kind of the next step. For better or worse, I think because there is such a craving for information, people are going to take it wherever they find it. And, unfortunately, [they may take it] even if it’s not clearly true. There’s no guidebook for doing opposition research and, politics being so volatile, to me the whole [WikiLeaks] thing is a little bit more cautionary than the dossier.

Krieger: Why is the WikiLeaks incident more troubling to you than the dossier?

Huffman: It [the dossier] doesn’t seem like an illegitimate way to find things out. Now, there are aspects of it that I’m curious about and that seem a little strange. But I don’t think it’s as unusual as, say, accepting a big document dump from WikiLeaks that may have been obtained in an illegal way.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Hilary Krieger

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ahouseoflies · 4 years

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The Best Films of 2019, Part IV

Part III, Part II, Part I PRETTY PRETTY GOOD MOVIES

62. Shazam! (David F. Sandberg)- One of the most comic-booky movies to come around in a while in the sense that it seems to be in fast forward for the first third, using shorthands because it has too much story to tell. I am sad to report that Shazam! has no Movie Stars in it, and I didn't realize how essential those were to the superhero genre. There is a cagey standalone quality to its modest bets though. I like that it's anchored in a real place and isn't afraid to be a little too scary for kids. I would see it mostly as a product of potential though, for a funny Jack Dylan Grazer, for the filmmakers, and for the studio. As a student of weird billing, I have so many questions about Adam Brody getting awarded fifth lead for a bit part.

61. Fighting with My Family (Stephen Merchant)- Dwayne Johnson as producer feels like the auteur here, since the formulaic story has more to do with his combed-over, please-everyone persona than with Stephen Merchant's more messy, improvisatory style. I couldn't care less about the time spent on Jack Lowden's brother character, but I was impressed with the physical part of Florence Pugh's performance. This is a movie you've seen a hundred times, but it hits most of its marks skillfully. 60. Spider-Man: Far From Home (Jon Watts)- This is a movie in which a spurned tech innovator uses drone projectors to stage a battle in which he defeats an elemental water monster to save Venice. The best sequence is one in which a boy tries to trick his friends into letting him sit next to the girl he likes on a flight. 59. John Wick: Chapter 3- Parabellum (Chad Stahelski)- What a criticism it is to claim that the filmmakers give in too much to fanservice, especially since I don't know what that word means anymore if something like this is the monoculture. So they gave us, the audience, what we wanted, and I was upset that it was two hours and ten minutes? Seriously though, have you ever eaten too much ice cream? 58. Fyre (Chris Smith)- An interesting yarn that gets at the foolishness of Internet influencing better than anything else that I've seen. I was surprised by how distant many of the subjects seemed, as if only the Big Bad Billy was responsible for any misleading. And I was grateful that, despite the level of criminality on display, it was still as funny as the tweets were at the time. The film lacks shape though, and it would be nice to have somebody smart on hand to answer questions. Can someone explain to me why it's so important that the island used to be Pablo Escobar's? Why should I want to be like Pablo Escobar? 57. Leaving Neverland (Dan Reed)- Part 1 works because of the striking similarities in the parallel stories, as well as the subjects' perspicacious understanding of their own emotions and childhood psychology. So Part 2 gets extremely frustrating when these men, who have already proven how articulate they are, seem puzzled by the obvious psychological problems they have as adults. 56. Diane (Kent Jones)- This movie is kind of good when it's purely slice-of-life, before it declares what it is. It's very good once it declares itself as a routine of self-flagellation, a sort of Raging Bull for women with multiple recipes for tater tot hotdish. It's a little less good when it speeds up and goes back on that thesis near the end. For the record, I think Mary Kay Place is fine. I don't get the critical adoration.

55. Rocketman (Dexter Fletcher)- If the choice is Bohemian Rhapsody or this, then I'll take this every time. Unlike the former, Elton John's life doesn't present an obvious high point in the second half or easy conflict for the first half. As a result, the relationships within John's family seem broad with manufactured conflict. (His birth father's hardness isn't that far off from Walk Hard's "wrong kid died.") But there's an authenticity here that's refreshing, a respect to the unique friendship between Elton and Bernie and a respect for the transformative power of the music. That sincerity extends to Egerton's generous performance, which nails the self-effacing Elton John smile. So there are some biopic structural problems that can't be helped, but if only to admire the '80s fits that Elton gets off, attention must be paid. 54. Triple Frontier (J.C. Chandor)- A useful example for differentiating between tropes and cliches of the action drama genre. For someone who gets less amped than I do for dudes meeting in a shipping container to have a conversation about how "now is the time to get out," it's probably full of cliches. For fans of hyper-masculine parables about getting a team together (that are also sort of meta-commentaries on their lead actor's fallen star), it's full of tropes. 53. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (Mike Mitchell)- The plot is nearly incoherent, and the sequel isn't really satirizing anything like the first one was. But the jokes come at a Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker clip. A character in a car chase saying, "It's like she knows my every move" before a cut reveals he's been using turn signals? That's some Frank Drebin stuff. 52. Long Shot (Jonathan Levine)- Jonathan Levine has carved out an interesting directorial space for himself, with a career far different from what I imagined when I saw and loved The Wackness, a film to which I'm a little afraid to return. Levine is making, at the highest level possible ($40 million budget?), the types of movies that we claim don't get made anymore. A one-crazy-night Christmas comedy, an adventure comedy, and now a political romantic comedy, all with top flight Movie Stars. Long Shot seems like a rare opportunity to put Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron together and do something special, and what we come out with is...cute. For every good decision the film makes--what a supporting cast, all playing rounded characters--it makes a bad one--leaning too heavily into Rogen's patented "I don't really know what we're yelling about" delivery. The music is uninspired, but the presidential satire is pretty clever. The rhythm of the film is jagged and doesn't really cut together, but the script is very fair to the Theron character. Even in the general tone of the film's politics, it declares a few ideals, but those positions are still too neutral and obvious. I had a good time, but in a more capable director's hands, this experience wouldn't feel like math. 51. Isn’t It Romantic (Todd Strauss-Schulson)- So frothy that it almost doesn't believe in itself, especially near the end, but I found myself laughing a lot. Regarding the gay best friend, I'm very interested in the space of politically incorrect humor that is acceptable only because the work has built up self-awareness in other areas. That's a difficult negotiation, but this movie balances it. 50. Yesterday (Danny Boyle)- There's one twist that stretches the moral center of the film, and two minutes later there's a twist that's probably just a bridge too far in good taste. Other than that, this is a really cute Richard Curtis script, and it's nice to hear "Hey Jude" on movie speakers. 49. Ready or Not (Radio Silence)- Short and spicy, despite one or two too many twists. I'm in the front row of the Adam Brody Revival, but I appreciated the movie more as an exercise in the paranoid misery built into wealth. I wish I could have written the line down, but Alex says something like, "I didn't realize how much you could do just because your family said that it was okay," and that's the whole film. If you can, see it without watching the trailer first.

48. The Laundromat (Steven Soderbergh)- Mary Ann Bernard is a Steven Soderbergh pseudonym, but what if he did hire an outside editor? What if someone saved him from himself? It's hard to believe that Meryl Streep is the heart of the film--if the film's thesis is "The meek will inherit the Earth?"--if we go on a twenty-minute detour to an African family and a ten-minute detour to China. I laughed quite a bit, and I admire the audacity of the ending. But this is a movie that knows what it's about without knowing how to be about it.

47. High Flying Bird (Steven Soderbergh)- As a person who can cite most NBA players' cap figures off the top of my head, I should love High Flying Bird, a movie about a sports agent who tries to topple the system during an NBA lockout. Instead I liked it okay. It takes an hour to kick into high gear, but once it does, some self-contained scenes are powerhouses, and the writer of Moonlight was always going to provide an emotional kick that is sometimes absent from Soderbergh's work. Like Soderbergh's Unsane from last year, High Flying Bird is shot on an iPhone, an appropriate form given that the execution is a do-it-yourself parable that takes place mostly inside. Soderbergh is a man who has always tried to trade the ossified system of moviemaking for experimentation, so most reviews have pointed toward the meta quality of capturing a character doing that same thing in another medium. Like most of his post-retirement work, however, I find myself asking one question: "Would anyone care if this were made by another director?" 46. Piercing (Nicolas Pesce)- Good sick fun with a taste for the theatrical. I saw twist one and twist three coming, but twist two was ingenious. It ends the only way it can, which is okay. 45. Booksmart (Olivia Wilde)- At first the film is hard to acclimate to, stylized as it is into a very specific but absurd setting, counteracted by a very specific and realistic relationship. The music cues are all awful until the Perfume Genius one, which is so perfect that it erases the half-dozen clunkers.But it's smartly funny, funnily warm, and warmly smart. The screenplay does some clever things with swapping the protagonists' wants and needs at crucial times. Molly will have an obvious drive that overrides Amy's fear, and then a few scenes later, there will be an organic reversal. 44. Joker (Todd Phillips)- Joker presents more ideas than it cogently lands. I don't disagree with Amanda Dobbins's burn that it feels more like a vision board than a coherent story. Still, its success kind of fascinates me. This dark provocation, shot on real locations, has way more in common with Phoenix entries like You Were Never Really Here than it does with the DCEU. In fact, the comic book shoehorns feel like intrusions into a story about a guy who likes to Jame Gumb skinny-dance. Dunk on me if you want, but I think it's most eerie and affecting as a portrait of mental illness. Whereas Joker is a criminal mastermind in Batman lore, this is a guy helpless enough to scrawl into a notebook, "The worst part about having a mental illness is pretending to people that you don't." And that idea gets borne out in a scene in which he's pausing and rewinding a tape to study how a talk show guest sits and waves like a regular person. It's rare enough to see a person this mentally ill depicted on screen; it's even rarer to see someone this aware of his own isolation and otherness.

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thegloober · 6 years

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The Best Strange: The Young Actors of Mid90s on Starring in Jonah Hill’s Directorial Debut

by Nick Allen

October 17, 2018 |

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“Mid90s” is a story that comes from a very personal, if not surprising part of writer/director Jonah Hill, who went from man-child comedy protege to two-time Oscar-nominee without playing characters who broadcasted his fandom for and deep knowledge of skateboard culture. Using real-life skaters as his lead actors, and having an attention to period detail that explicitly eschews nostalgia porn, the movie nonetheless immerses us into the skater world, through the eyes of a young man (Sunny Suljic’s Stevie) trying to find an escape from his relationship with his violent older brother (Lucas Hedges) and his mother (Katherine Waterston). Stevie finds camaraderie, and a wealth of life lessons, during his time skating and chilling with the likes of Fuckshit (Olan Prenatt), Fourth Grade (Ryder McLaughlin) and Ruben (Gio Galicia), and the wise, older Ray (Na-Kel Smith).

RogerEbert.com spoke these young actors about making the film, the music that Hill turned them onto, the different details that keep the story genuine to the ‘90s and more.

When you guys were all on set, what was a day of shooting like?

SUNNY SULJIC: Every single day it was always something new. It was always like a different scene and it was just like, every single day each emotion was like different for me, at least. It was insane, we’d all see each other and get happy. It was one of the best experiences, I loved it and want to do it again.

You should pressure Jonah for a sequel.

SS: You can’t do a sequel with these types of films, it will be a classic and it’s already said its thing, and then sequels are like … I don’t know, it’s like saying a sequel for “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”

What about for you guys?

RYDER MCLAUGHLIN: It felt like I was going to school. You get to school and it’d be like, you’re getting your make-up done and you’re seeing your friends in homeroom … messing around and then you go to work and do stuff.

GIO GALICIA: That’s such a good way to put it. I never thought of it like that.

SS: That was alright.

GG: Nah, that was on fire.

RM: Yeah, don’t steal that from me.

(Clockwise L-R): Olan Prenatt, Ryder McLaughlin, Sunny Suljic, Gio Galicia

Did it feel like the ‘90s when you were on set? Did Jonah do anything in particular to give you the feel of the period?

SS: Oh yeah, like, a lot of the scenes that didn’t really make it into the movie, it felt like the time period definitely. There was a Fatburger scene, and the Fatburger looked like it was exactly in the ‘90s. We just walked in and I came out of the van and I just saw “Fatburger.” And I’ve seen photos of the Fatburgers from the ‘90s, and it was the exact same. It helped me out so much, I was like damn I’m really in the ‘90s and in the character. I invested so much of my time. And all the food, the works, everything.

OLAN PRENATT: And the pictures on the wall, I remember hearing Jonah talk to the set decorator, and he said, “Are you sure that this is an archive?” Everything was verbatim from the ‘90s.

Was it weird to play a character in the ‘90s?

SS: It was probably the best strange that it could be. It was a lot of craziness, but I loved it so much. I’m just smiling thinking about it.

OP: We watched films, listened to iPods that he gave us that the specific characters would listen to. Because you can understand a lot from somebody’s music selection. And that was pretty much a part of the character adjusting.

He gave you actual iPods?

OP: Literal iPod. It says like, “Mid90s” on the back of it. It’s so cool.

Don’t lose it! Or sell it and make a lot of money.

SS: I’m not selling mine!

OP: Yeah, I prefer listening to that iPod then going on YouTube. It’s awesome.

What was the moment that you guys knew that Jonah knew what he was doing?

SS: The first minute I met him. I read the script, I mean, the first audition, it had so much meaning into it.

What was your first audition?

SS: The first audition was the skate shop scene, and a scene actually with my mom, the Benihana scene. I already felt it, and we did a chemistry test where we were all there together, and it just felt right. The script, I mean Jonah put so much time, work and effort, it just turned out so great, and I loved it.

OP: One time that I felt like that was when we all went into the skate shop, and I seen all of the ads that were posted on the wall, the boards that were posted on the wall. Every board was actual graphics from that era, the wheels. Everything in the skate shop, and I realized that, wow, Jonah, I skated when I was younger and you were really a part of that culture, to the T.

Writer/director Jonah Hill

Does he skate now?

OP: He did a kickflip on set.

RM: I think he hurt his knee. Not on set, but before.

SS: He was already hurt, and then he did a kickflip. It wasn’t like he hurt himself on a kick flip.

He’s not a skateboarder but he knows the culture.

OP: He’s a part of that culture. He’s not just a fan of that culture and knows it, he’s a part of the skateboarding culture.

RM: But also, tasteful. He’s super into a lot of things that … I remember a long time ago there’s a company called Crailtap, and they have like a mini top five, and Spike Jonze is a part of that company. And it was Jonah Hill outside of a skate shop in New York talking about his top five favorite skate videos, and it’s videos I’ve never heard of. A lot of them were from the ‘90s, and they were stuff you probably watched growing up, and it was like, I don’t even know this stuff.

SS: Yeah, definitely. If Jonah did not skate, it would not be how it is. The skate shops … that is such an accurate representation of how the ‘90s looked, how everybody’s just hanging out, and how genuine it is.

OP: Super respectful to the skateboarding culture.

The language in the movie is very ‘90s, but crude with casual usage of words like “fag,” “retard,” “gay,” etc. Did you guys talk with Jonah much about that?

SS: It just sparked—I have an insane note on that. Jonah was saying that if there was not any of that, it would be fake. Completely fake. So I think it was smart for putting that in because if he would just fake that, it was really real, and that little … it wasn’t too subtle, it was pretty out there, but that was one of the main things in the ‘90s.

It feels like people were a little more casual with those words back then.

SS: Yeah, people were more casual. Those little slurs. But we all definitely talked about that.

OP: But also during one of the Q&As in the beginning of the press tour, he said that the best feedback that he got was, “Oh, so you guys are gonna release a movie from the ‘90s.” So all of that was a part of being genuine to the ‘90s.

Sunny Suljic

Did you guys pick up any new music or new interests while working on this movie?

OP: Cypress Hill, I wasn’t really open to that style. [laughs]

SS: I love the … OK, so as we got the iPod, a lot of those songs were on the soundtrack. And I loved all those songs on the soundtrack, especially when I go in my brother’s room and the first song that plays, that was one of my favorite songs.

OP: Oh, one thing—one of my favorite songs is the song that I went into the party and came out with a bunch of 40s. That song is crazy. The first time I heard it, he played the scene back right after we filmed it and then added the music to it. And then play music on his phone, and I thought he was just seeing how it would go. But that was the song, and I was like, “Whoa, this is insane.”

RM: I had to look that song up after. There’s like a Wu-Tang song that they sampled …

There’s a GZA song in there.

OP: Yeah, yeah. I originally heard the Pharrell version! And I was like, “Whoa.”

GG: I feel like after we got the iPods, I listened to all the music, and it just opened a new genre of music. And more ‘90s music, it was so sick. I tried to look up most of the music.

SS: There was a lot of Wu-Tang songs on there. They were super sick.

GG: Huh?

SS: The Wu-Tang songs?

GG: Oh yeah, those were sick.

(L-R): Olan Prenatt, Ryder McLaughlin

This movie’s about people being shaped by who they know, and what they do. Who is someone that was a big influence on you?

SS: That’s probably exactly what I would say, but also Jonah. I mean, skateboarding definitely made me realize at like a younger age, I just saw the world at a younger age so i’m more open minded. Jonah, I mean, taught me a lot of things, acting as well, but just also personal things to know, because he’s been in the acting industry for such a long time. There are definitely things that he’s taught me.

What has Jonah told you as someone who was once also a young actor in the industry?

SS: Just influencing me, because he was growing up in the ‘90s, it was a lot of negativity with speech, you know? And just be aware of what you’re saying, and who you’re talking to. I would get into detail, but they are Jonah’s secrets and personal information. [laughs]

What about you guys? Who had a big influence on you?

RM: As a person? My mom and my dad.

GG: Before I started skating, I was always just inside my house. I wasn’t really going out, trying to explore. And that’s when I found skating. It opened me up to a ton of different types of people. I feel like I connected with older people, so I would always hang with older people and see how they reacted to everything else, and it was so much different than how I would react to stuff. I feel like it matured me, in the better way.

OP: I would agree with Gio, I think with skateboarding, you can experience … all the things we go through and see and are exposed to through skateboarding really shape who I am. So if skateboarding was a person, skateboarding. [laughs]

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