#as u can see i HATE basic/budget versions
Text
it’s Saturday, so let’s post my completely correct doll opinions
#as u can see i HATE basic/budget versions#also swimsuit versions are normally just. Bad#today I woke up and chose Violence#im going pspsps at my doll mutuals
0 notes
Text
the funniest jokes in bfdi
flower’s announcer crusher that she just. has, and everyone else just uses it too
trying to put out a fire by holding ice cube’s recovery center over the fire so she just falls into it endlessly
every single one of yellow face’s products, including but not limited to
fork attractant, for when you need a fork but don’t have the cutlery on hand
headphones you cannot change the volume on or remove
money slips, you just write an amount on them, and it counts as legal tender
“thats a pentagon!” “yeah! like if you took my name and added ‘Tagon’!“
in like episode 2 when they all run away from something and a second later flower casually power-walks away from it instead of running
when balloony deflated and a while later cloudy flies over and goes “i cannot believe it! this is a dead body!!”
“he’s not dead, he just needs a little help thats all! (starts reinflating him too fast) but i agree, he is a hindrance when he is deflate- ohh noooo”
hollow jawbreakers that sound can come into but can’t go out of
when they stuck loser in a jawbreaker they inverted it, so they can hear him talk to himself but he cant hear anything around him
no one seems to know that thats why they can hear him
one time they all ended up in space. because of budget cuts.
actually every time budget cuts lead to something that seems way cooler than their previous stuff, like sparkly purple lasers instead of a mechanical arm to eliminate people with
the consistently bad cake at stake prizes. one time it was just a block of ice cut into six pieces. one time it was dirty shovels.
the magical die of judgement
when freesmart drove across the ocean in their van and they managed it by holding their breath and each time one of them died they just recovered them and threw their corpse out the back
golf ball messing up naming her team by saying things like “we need to be another name” and ending up on teams called Another Name and A Better Name Than That
one team was formed entirely around learning to not kill people. pillow overhears them say “youre against killing?” and goes “:D did someone say killing??”
tennis ball admonishing rocky for not knowing how to write: “no arms is no excuse”
they had to find a needle in a haystack and needle just turned herself in, successfully
when they started using a board with the points written on it on flaps of paper instead of a computer screen, but due to budget cuts, it could only display two digits per contestant, so anyone who went over 100 started immediately dropping to the bottom of the rankings
when ice cube was sleeping at the cake of stake podiums and got shot up into the air at like 3000 mph
2763
when the eliminated contestants tried to escape the loser chamber and they just rolled it off into the ocean
theyre saved because the sun rises and picks them up out of the ocean
also apparently the chamber opens for like five minutes a day for sunlight, but instead of just climbing out during that time, which they seem to be capable of doing, they do a much more convoluted thing
they were sick of four so they got rid of him by multiplying him with donut, and it worked
ruby has some really weirdly specific ideas of beauty and coaches flower
the line delivery of “killing a bubble is as easy as one, two, th(pop)” “i just learned two things about bubble: she can be su i c i d a l and she’s S O D U M B she CANT even count to T H R E E!”
a few episodes later bubble angrily shows them she CAN count to three if she lives long enough to do so, and pencil and match are both like :O :O
bubbles first line in season four is her rapidly counting to ten before getting popped
the way each team breaks their jawbreakers
8 ball just goes “MNYAH” and bites it in half
"okay black hole, do the thing”
leafy tries to use woody’s tongue to lick it open even though rocky and balloony were doing just fine using acid
iance just going ‘bwehbwehbweh’ all licking the same one
team ice cube was doing a mix of bwebwhbehbbwehbw and loudly drilling it open with naily
when four loved so hard he shot eraser off over the horizon
when they’re discussing team names in season one and theyre all talking over each other so you cant hear what theyre saying, except match, who grabs a megaphone and screams “SMOKY HOT FIERY BUNS”
when needle made a cake and put so much yeast in it that it breached earth’s atmosphere and astronomers apparently began classing earth as part of a three planet system (”consisting of the earth, the moon, and something called ‘needles cake’”)
“it’s ice cube! and she’s shrinking?” “she’s falling”
saying “(x character)! wake up!!” when it’s unclear (to the audience) why a character looks silly or apparently isnt responding
blocky’s sleeping pose is him with his eyes wide open, sporting a big goofy grin and hugging his legs
david’s sleeping pose is him with X eyes
one time the contest was to fill a tank with water from crying, and golf ball immediately ordered tennis ball to cry. he couldn’t do it on command, so golf ball tried, and cried her first ever tear, just... her first one
when the prize was fortune cookies, the fortunes were bracelety’s notes about how much she loves ice cube
“four, where’d you get these fortunes again?” “dumpster!”
“lightning always forgets to fly, so he had to be the fake”
when they were flying paper planes and stapy accidentally stapled his teammates into theirs, and he just hovered next to it while he was talking to them before they all started to plummet
the entire scene where liy tries to use ice cube to force teardrop to talk
“i’ll hold teardrops jaw open and you wiggle her vocal chords”
“i hate you” “yeah i hate her too!” “no. i hate you.”
“ice cube will only stop when she WANTS to stop!” “i want to stop”
“YOU SAID YOU WOULD HELP ME! YOU SAID YOU WERE COOL!” “so r r y (starts wiggling)”
“ICE CUBE! I AM APPALLED!!!!!”
ice cube gets bitten and starts screaming while bracelety is yelling “YEAH ICE CUBE! I CANT HEAR YOU, LOUDER!!”
apparently everyone who hates golf ball gets physically sick when they get near her (or at least, ruby does and snowball did once he knew she was there)
blocky got eaten by a monster in episode two but it turned out the monster missed him by a bit so he was fine
taco’s teammates thought she was dead forever and wrote eulogies for her, and once they found out she was alive lollipop threw hers away, but saw kept hers because in her eyes they’re still valid!!
when things started to get dramatic in the s1 finale, and leafy called announcer on the phone and he was in a ball pit
loser’s trapped in a jawbreaker and the only thing with him is donut’s diary. the next time you see him he’s reading it furiously and it’s filled with color-coded sticky notes
pillow decided if you wave your arms it means all your “care spirit” is getting sucked out your arms and sent into space (”a true indicator that person doesn’t give a fluff”)
remote got hacked and her FIRST INSTINCT is to send the hackers a bomb
“if theres an announcer recovery center now, that means we can kill the announcer as much as we want and he’ll still come back to give us dream island!”
they ask black hole to push them in their swing and he says he can’t push, but he can pull like there’s no tomorrow
“no i can literally warp space time so that there will be no tomorrow” “yeah,h don’t do that.”
when they have a tiebreaker announcer pulls out a silk tie and goes “first team to break this tie wins”
the second time, almost before he finished speaking, snowball just reached over and ripped it in half effortlessly
“proves you don’t need frills to make a feast for the eyes!” “more like taco doesn’t need to be dead to be deceased in my eyes!!!”
they had a race where everyone on each team had their legs tied together (like a three-legged race, but with like six people on a team)
pen’s team was doing fine but he wasn’t, so they just dragged him along behind
snowball tied his team into a ball and dragged them himself, to predictable results, and wouldn’t stop until he got to the finish line even though it took him until after the sun went down
he failed, actually, and him and his team plummeted down a ravine when he passed out
“the opposite of dream island! night...nightmare moon!!”
donut stuck his arms through a one way camera to the moon (it transmits matter as well as light), and to fix the fact that his arms were on the moon and his body was on earth, he pushed the entire earth through the camera
the moon is smushed up against the earth now. it has not been resolved yet
“gelatin and firey tied their legs together and fell off” “ya, seems like the kind of thing they would do”
pencil got caught by a monster and couldnt get away, so they had to kill her so they could recover her somewhere else, and they let her pick how they did it, which lead to everyone just sawing her in half while she grinned ear to ear. she was singing too. iconic
but first, match, her best friend, started waggling a big butcher’s knife around at her going “hoohoo hoeheehee im killing pencil loookat me” and pencil said “match put your butterknife away, you have to ACTUALLY kill me”
and when they were sawing her in half bubble had the BIGGEST, most BLISSFUL grin, with her eyes half closed like a happy cat
bell asks for help making people stop climbing her string, and snowball assures her he can do it, but he’ll have to climb her string to get to them
then like twenty people followed him up
when writing utensil characters use themselves to write with
sometimes they have tiny versions of themselves (sans limbs), but sometimes they just like, pull their caps off and write with their heads
(the same scream noise they use every time a group of people screams) “HONESTLY! (grabs a new can of fork repellent from hammerspace) are you guys going to scream like that EVERY time i use up a can?”
dodecadangit
OH THANKS AN OCTADECILLION, MATCH
they were basically playing hot potato where if you look at someone who was glowing you’d catch the glow, and most teams ended up just chilling with their eyes closed, but golf ball yelled “EVERYONE GET ON MY ROCKET” and she and her team just left earth entirely
this did not stop them from catching the glow
someone’s like “the communicator dish still works” and book goes “oh,” dips a chip into the communicator dish and splashes dip everywhere, “THATS what this is?”
the, like, five minute long end-credits scene of ice cube falling off a cliff eternally
pencil tells ruby which button to press and she keeps getting it wrong, partly because NEW BUTTONS KEEP APPEARING
the poison antidote that has the side effect of making the recipient eat one other contestant
pencil coaching her teammates on how to jump higher
“MMR? I love measles, mumps, and rubella!”
“golf ball knows how to do, like, everything!” (cut to golf ball) “i don’t know how to do, like, anything”
basketball invited 8 ball to be on her team cuz they’re both balls, then 8 ball said “sure, and let’s adopt these three” in reference to three other ball characters
loser said when he was younger he used to play with a toy that was apparently only just invented an hour ago, and everyone, like 60 characters, immediately disowned him and started a turf war over the situation
“black hole, you’re strong! open this jar for me!”
(as the world is literally ending) “FLOWER! WHATAVE YOU DONE??” “i got this jar open!!!”
whenever a host dies or is otherwise put out of commission and the contestants just keep trucking along until they remember no one can get the prize if the host isn’t around to give it to them
that time announcer used like ten negatives in a sentence
the way announcer says “wow!” with more emotion than anything else he says? idk if it’s intentional, or even a joke, but it’s the best thing
(slow mo) “i want to cry now, i really do”
“and i cry acid”
ruby died of sadness and book made it big by selling her remains
when they say some line that’s just regular words in a slightly unique way, and then the line gets repeated throughout the series
announcer accidentally-on-purpose got everyone killed, except david (who’s immune to bugs), and he had a david cloner, so he just went ahead and replaced everyone with davids in costumes
halfway through cake at stake, the original contestants show up unexpectedly and explain that they “faked their deaths! obviously.”
“ive decided to not cancel bfdi!” “aw, seriously?”
the noises david and dora make when they do things, like clattering, or sprouting leaves
bubble and match pretending to be trees
“NO BUBBLE! TREES DONT SAY THAT!” “OH, RIGHT! FSSHHHHHH! FWWWSHH!!!!”
when nickel and coiny get close together bad things happen
“how’s the tree-climbing going?” “it’s okay, but it’d be easier if you helped. (swoop) okay, just got to the top”
“yes! I am the first one up the tree!” “that’s NOT true, I was here FIRST”
i guess we’ll just have to use this trebuchet tennis ball built before he died
“wha! yhad this the HWOLE TIME, I DIDN EVEN HAVE TO CLIMB THE TREE?” “physical exertion builds character :)”
when everyone’s begging four to bring back their dead teammates, especially saw, who lost her entire team, and four is like okay I’ll bring back one (1) person, and saw very reverently starts to ask him for her dead team leader, but grassy says “tennis ball!” and four listens to him instead, and everyone immediately starts nagging four again to bring back more important people
leafy, about to melt ice cube down for metal scrap: “ice cube, come on down! you can be my alloy!”
they met a new character and they’re like “who is that?” and pie’s like “I dunno, try squishing it”
“theres another one? whoa! it totally has a different texture from the first one!”
8 ball beginning every single statement with things like “although I don’t have a favorite number...”
“I do this!” (grabs pin and turns her, screaming, into a squiggly pile of lines) “pretty cool, dontcha think?”
“can,,,, you bring her back?” “no” (five seconds later) “HEY CHECK THIS OUT! (brings back pin)”
pen high fived black hole and his arm spaghettified
“what are you doing?” “im going to die!” “hi needle! he’s not going to die.”
iance was trying to dig their way up out of the ground but they couldnt because golf ball kept blocking them from the surface
“maybe theyre trying to communicate with me?” “yeah they’re telling you to stop”
“they raise a very convincing argument. BUT IT’S NOT ENOUGH!” “OH what a pain!!”
she accurately guessed the fact that there was a group of people underground running from some lava who “clearly value avoiding [golf ball] more than their own safety”
“ohhhh so THIS is golf balls idea of fun!” “(sigh)... yep”
they looked through a camera and couldn’t see donut (the zoom wasn’t adjusted) and marker went “donut’s a vampire too?”
too???
“meh, I’ve still got other evidence”
one time the eliminated contestants got to vote who to eliminate and snowball was like “ice cube, cuz it’s really hot in the TLC and I can’t be the only one cooling it off”
like four other people were like “oh man he’s right” and did the same thing
“wouldn’t it be cool if the last word of the last episode was the same as the first word of the first episode?” “yeah :)”
“take. a deep breath. you know. A DEEP FRIED BREATH”
at the end of the episode he shows up with some boiling oil and is like “LIKE THIS! ONE, (sizzling and screaming noises)” “COINY NO”
leafy was about to throw a knife at them but watched this happen offscreen with horror and then left them alone
david’s human, and that’s just weird
“im still mad you killed bubble” “youre one to talk, you were about to impale TWO WHOLE teams” “yeah, but bubble’s life? is special”
pen’s like “okay we three need to stick together while we’re picking teams!” but then eraser hears some other team has free food, so he runs off and pen very flatly goes “okay, we lost eraser.”
“well let’s not pick pen, he’s still two hundred bigintillion dollars in debt” which is mostly hilarious without the first three seasons of context, but even with context it’s hilarious. he looks so shamefaced when they say it too. i love pen
once someone finally picks him he IMMEDIATELY perks up and takes charge
the hphprcc went into self destruct mode and everyone started frantically trying to figure out what to do, and book’s like “okay it’ll either just disappear without a trace, or blow up and kill us all, 50/50 chance” and then of course, it exploded, and ruby started screaming, and then book was like “ruby, stop hallucinating! see? it just disappeared, without a trace!”
“YOuuOURE HalLUCINAATING!!” “DON’T do that!! it is K-R-E-P!”
pin tried to knock everyone off the eiffel tower by shaking it and book was like “who does she think she’s kidding? it’s the eiffel tower we won’t fall off”
“name ONE! name ONE friend you haven’t gotten extremely angry at!” “thats not fair,! there isnt even any of them!”
8ball was saying the opposite of everything golf ball was saying, up to and including calling the members of their team, a better name that that, “worse namers”
“is this because i killed you last episode?” “what?? no, i dont care about that!”
“life is CHEAP! get me a BANANA!!!”
flower bit off half of announcer’s head and he couldn’t make the K sound anymore
“have this -ashew” “bless you”
“no i said -ashew. -ashew. -ashew. -ashew.” “wow you must be allergic to something”
“maybe announcer’s allergic to this cashew? here bubble, you can have it!”
pencil won the staring contest because david’s allergic to sunrises
freesmart was making video diaries during the three year hiatus, but apparently did absolutely no editing or even rewatching of the videos, because they found out three years too late that ruby left the lens cap on every time she used the camera
when four played the cake at stake song in the classroom he played it on a low-quality portable tv instead of cutting to a fullscreen video
“iknowafasterway!” “NORUBYYOULLDIE!”
pin said she didnt want to halve the votes she got because she hadnt done anything that would make people want to vote for her, and it immediately cut to a series of old scenes of her throwing people under the metaphorical bus
literally nothing is funnier than “i mean, i havent done anything to make people vote for me” (cut to flashback) “there’s too much weight on this sinking ship!!! we need to throw someone OVERBOARD!!!!”
one team got stuck doing their nine-piece puzzle for a MONTH because all the pieces were the same dark brown color
the pieces were upside down
a month
“the finish line! it’s only twenty or so yards away!”
two people talking and using the word “needy” twice and pausing to throw their hands up protectively and go “HNnnnynGH”
“why do i have filling, but also a hole?” - donuts diary
in 5b theyre talking to some npcs and theyre like “well dont hurt us, because we just got finished being punished in lego brick’s dungeon” and the npcs were like “oh yeah he does that. he’s a great guy, but he does that.”
also in 5b when book met lego brick the FIRST thing she asked is if he’s “safe to look at” which,???
they did a trivia contest and multiple questions were in complete gibberish
presumably this is an actual language in canon since like three other people answered correctly, also in gibberish, but still
“you’ve got this, bubble, you’re great at mental contests” “question one: ooba grooba, grooba shmooba?” “HUH?”
“but tennis ball -- oh... tennis ball....--”
team naming, especially in season four
“we’re not ALL in the alliance!” “well, if you take ‘the all’ out of the alliance, you get...”
“and what is your name?” (everyone says their own actual names at once)
ice cube is not on team ice cube
Death Prevention And Creating Trust
“let’s be called The Losers!” “awww! you didn’t have to”
wheel ooze a hole bunch. WOAH bunch!
“but then it sounds like youre saying free-DUMB!” “and we are so like totally not dumb!”
when the losers decided to use iance’s idea to win the swing contest and it was styled like an overenthusiastic science video
“WHOA!!! iance just had a RADICAL idea!!!”
“TREASON! TREASON! TREASON!” “im in what?”
“seriously why are so many people drowning? it’s not even quicksand, or anything” - announcer, responding to five people drowning in a basket of bread
they were whispering with “susuusus” noises and cloudy whispered “zuzuzuzzuz”
the spaceship with the sign that says “this spaceship runs on big squishy contestants” or whatever and after the credits it slowly flips over to say “this spaceship runs on VOTERS”
“stop shooting at me!” “no way! i got these cannonballs on sale and IM GONNA GET MY MONEYS WORTH!!!”
eggy and cake’s argument over who has a deeper spiritual connection with loser
“my connection is so strong that when i crack, i bleed loser’s COLOR”
playing catch with a star they plucked out of the big dipper, and leafy’s horror over it
adding “ey” to people’s names (personal favorites are announcery, fourty-four, flowey, treey, and belly)
blueberries are EXPLOSIVE, including the ones inside pie, so sometimes she just explodes
“but over a year ago, four said you dont need frills to make a feast for the eyes, so that means hes okay with trash!”
the anti-advertisements advertisement!
four ate a whole team and they just sort of stood around inside him sticking their arms out his mouth and laughing hysterically
“again! again again again !!!!”
“we could be leaving!” “yeah, but when’s the last time you saw remote this happy? this is good for her!”
book, three episodes into season 3: hey, what is it we’re even battling for?
(iconic voice): dwream island,??
when they had a beauty contest and firey speaker box and flower speaker box just immediately chose firey and flower to be the winners without a second’s hesitation
“book! come help us catch a criminal!” “no thanks, im good!”
donut tried to punish people for getting the wrong answers when he was hosting, but it turns out a recording of four screeching doesn’t work... quite as well as the real deal
four zapping gelatin
ok ok ok this is insanely long but please add more if u have any favorites i missed
#honorable mention is 'pen island all caps no spaces'#its so stupid and i lose it every single time#and the reanimated 1a and 1b map when leafy icy and coiny were on their boat and inexplicably dressed as pirates#its the CUTEST Thing and i think about it a lot#bfdi#long post#o
39 notes
·
View notes
Text
I shouldn’t argue with people on Reddit
My clown encounter
I was talking to someone about the Camp Pining Hearts graphic novel on Reddit, and among other things, I made a joking comment about how Mr. Frowney appearing in the audience of the Camp Pining Play to watch Mr. Smiley perform might mean they’re married now. Someone in the comments had this to say to me:
Reddit clown:
That would imply that anyone on SU cares about developing characters.
Follow the jump if you would like some bloviating about how this show fails at complex relationships, a funny conspiracy theory about how fan response directly controls which characters appear and what plots the Crew writes, and a smug conclusion that No One Can Answer This Deep Question and Therefore SU Is A Bad Show.
Reddit clown:
It’s clear that the author is trying to prop up their ship by purposefully making Amedot out to be unhealthy and problematic, even if it means derailing established personality and history. It’s pretty childish really.
“Does that imply what I think it does about Mr. Frowney and Mr. Smiley? Hey, maybe they’re married now. :)”
That would imply that anyone on SU cares about developing characters.
I addressed part of the Amedot comment and also said this:
Me:
Re character development: This graphic novel was not written by anyone who writes for the show. There's not really any constructive conversation I can have from here if your position really is "no one on SU cares about developing characters," though. This just seems like such an unnecessarily negative "lol this show sucks, edgier-than-u" comment that I don't know where it can go from here and I'm not planning to follow wherever you're trying to take this.
Reddit clown:
Well in general, the show doesn’t have a good track record for character dynamics
[link to a blog post on Tumblr which is literally a one-sentence repetition of what they just said about bad group dynamics]
And given that Frowney only appeared once, sadly there’s zero chance of him and Smiley ever getting back together. Same with Mystery Girl and Pearl.
lol ok
people who have only shown up once obviously won’t ever show again
no source needed on having a good track record, we’ll just believe it’s obvious if you can find an example of someone saying this on a Tumblr blog somewhere agreeing with your assessment
Me:
I have no personal stake in whether a rare character appears again--I'm not yearning for either of those people to return--but it's straight-up weird to say someone will never show up again because they only showed up once.
Then again, I remember how confident people were that Bismuth would never return (and how consistently they coupled their absolute certainty with sneering comments about how the voice actor was surely too expensive), so I guess it's not too surprising to me that some folks still think certain characters are guaranteed to never return. Bottom line is you never know when the throwaway mailman character in episode 3 will turn out to be a regularly returning character starting in episode 56. It just doesn't make sense to pretend such things are obvious. You do not know.
As for the continued weirdness of claiming that this group of characters has no character dynamics to speak of, I mean, it's literally one of the things I've appreciated the most all along about the show, and . . . I don't have to exaggerate or read into what I see to find it, nor am I confused about whether it's actually there. I again have no personal stake in whether you feel that way. It just strikes me as a bizarro world kind of comment. You're having a VERY different experience of this show from the one I've had.
Reddit clown:
That’s different. Bismuth was brought back thanks to fan demand. Meanwhile, these are specifically one off characters, especially considering the show’s halfway over. Not everyone can rise above a one shot character.
And can you name any notable character dynamics not attached to Steven? Compare that to say Adventure Time which had great character dynamics.
Oh god
“”””Bismuth was brought back because of fan demand””””
““““Can you name any notable character dynamics”“““
Dear lord what show is this cheese log of a person watching?
Me:
It's really weird that you think Bismuth was brought back because fans "demanded" it. You don't know how the show works at all.
And "then name character dynamics not attached to Steven" is a bizarre request. If you truly did not see the literal thousands of years of history between characters that enhanced who they are and how they act long before Steven was there, me trotting them out isn't going to help you believe it's there. Steven being the strict point of view character creates a situation that Adventure Time doesn't have, so it's weird to expect the show to diverge significantly from the lens it's designed to be viewed through, but believing you've presented a gotcha here is basically admitting you haven't noticed any of the relationships between the characters that Steven actually spent a ton of time discovering--whole episodes were even dedicated to relationships between characters who aren't Steven or aren't relating to Steven when they're revealing such things. It's not even subtext.
Reddit clown:
Well after fan backlash from the episodes Bismuth, they basically had no choice but to bring her back. And given how expensive the VA is, it hurt their budget.
And really, what relationships? The whole thing revolves around Steven. The Gems are Steven’s moms, Connie is Steven’s love interest, the town is Steven’s friends. The only interesting dynamic is Lars hating Steven and even then he joined the Steven cult. Look how wasted Lapis and Peridot became when they escaped Steven’s clutches.
Oh
Oh this person is one of those
““““the steven cult”“““
The objectively only interesting thing is when someone hates someone
Cartoon Network’s budget was exploded by hiring a voice actor oh god
Me:
Wow. Your obliviousness and misplaced confidence is baffling, but . . . to be honest I feel like I'm watching someone who doesn't understand they're embarrassing themselves, and it's getting uncomfortable.
I know that you don't know what's going on behind the scenes of this show, but it is really bizarre sometimes that fans believe their behavior and their outrage is changing the writing or influencing what characters they use.
You really think fans raging about things is an actual "demand" they respond to. That they "had to" bring back Bismuth because of something FANS DID. Yikes. But I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that people are still saying things like this. Some people still think the writers stole plot elements from fan theories. I don't know why some people in fandoms think they're that important or relevant. The show is not being controlled by our responses in any way. If "fan backlash" worked to bring characters back, there are many others who would have returned long ago.
And isn't that lovely, you've got a little conspiracy theory about how paying the scads of money you imagine are required for Bismuth's voice actor have "hurt the budget" (oblivious to how many voice actors on this show have done more episodes despite being more famous/having higher net worth). You clearly have zero clue about how any of this works, and you shouldn't keep pretending you have knowledge about it, especially not while talking to people who do.
As for relationships, you're not really asking me. Like I said, if I wasted my time trotting out descriptions of relationship dynamics that you should have seen for yourself if you watched the show, there's no way that would convince you they were worthwhile, well-developed relationships if the show itself didn't. I see complex and multifaceted relationships, growth, change, conflict, and resolution, in so many relationships, like Greg and Rose figuring out what love is to them, Ruby and Sapphire growing into a healthier version of who they are together, Pearl learning to think independently of serving Rose even as she struggles with her nature, the long history of Pearl with Garnet, Amethyst with Pearl, even Greg with Amethyst (all things Steven has to discover and understand only partially as the show goes on) . . . but if you truly believe characters in this show who existed before Steven appeared 14 years ago have shown no evidence of having layered relationship dynamics that do not focus on him or depend on him, I don't know what show you're watching and I can't help you.
I don't know why you're even here since just about every bit of content you've posted here is "the thing you like sucks" and completely unsupported comments about why, sourced in nothing. It's just like . . . not even an argument, it's just a weird demonstration that you don't get what's going on so you've concluded nothing is. It's weird, and normally I've got no problem with criticism or spirited discussion, but these comments are just . . . they're empty. They're demonstrations of obliviousness or willful ignorance. It's just so, so weird to talk to someone who thinks they're laying down critical points but reads as so ignorant of what even happened in the source material or behind the scenes.
For the record, this person was going on in other threads about how Amedot is better than Lapidot “objectively” and partly because “it looks cuter,” saying the writing on the entire series is garbage, that “Steven as a character doesn’t make sense,” and that the show’s writers have no standards. Wow edgy.
Reddit clown:
I mean think about it; a famous celebrity gets more likes around the same the animation goes down hill?
And I would consider the following on the writers stealing fan content; keep in mind that Rose being Pink Diamond was a widely circulated fan theory and people were very stubborn about it. It could be that the crew felt like they needed to validate them. This lead to them to an unsatisfying and out of left field twist.
And I simply don’t see the powerful character interactions people brag about. What’s the character dynamics of the Gems? Again, the blog post I posted is the gotcha moment that no can answer.
I reiterate that the blog post referenced here is one sentence, and it says, “For a show that revolves around a group of characters, SU doesn’t have very interesting group dynamics writing (when they bother having them at all).” That is this person’s “gotcha.” That is this person’s “NO ONE CAN SATISFACTORILY ANSWER THIS” criticism.
omg I’m so confused and weirded out by this.
But
THINK ABOUT IT
A CELEBRITY “GOT LIKES” AND THEN THERE WAS A SPECIFIC TIME WHEN THE ANIMATION GOES DOWNHILL
It’s obviously because Cartoon Network was bankrupted in their ANIMATION BUDGET because they had to pay Uzo Aduba
And this was “”””forced”””” to happen by FAN BACKLASH
When we whine about wanting a character back we decimate the animation budget and make it go downhill guise
AND THIS PERSON ALSO ADMITS TO BELIEVING THE SHOW WENT IN A DIFFERENT “UNSATISFYING” DIRECTION THAN THEIR ORIGINAL INTENT BECAUSE THE CREW NEEDED TO VALIDATE STUBBORN FANS. AND THEY THOUGHT THE PINK DIAMOND REVEAL WAS “OUT OF LEFT FIELD.” YIIIIIIIIKES.
I had to stop replying here (and should have much earlier) because like
wow, how can someone have NO ABILITY TO INTERPRET THE CONTENT OF A SHOW and then still be this smug about thinking they’ve got its mediocrity nailed? While also being so confident about thinking they know fans control the structure of the storytelling? Unnggggh
46 notes
·
View notes
Text
lmao im kind of afraid of talking to my profs from major thesis project course about my project, cause im THIS CLOSE to going off on both of their stuck up faces. I didn’t want to talk about this on this blog for at least a month now cause i know its gonna turns to 30 paragraphs and everybodys gonna hate me for that. but i have to talk abt this now cause i gotta cope lol!!!
i s2g everybody in the class knows that they have been anything but helpful when it comes to supervising our project, and their suggestions are usually so subjective af. The fact that they structure a 4th year THESIS course with full year course load into ONE TERM is already hazardous as it is, they literally failed several people’s mid term progress report presentation on ARBITRARY TERMS (i passed, fortunately, but my grade was not pretty). it was twenty fucking five present of people’s overall grade, and it’s not like people didn’t meet the very VAGUE guideline they provided for this presentation--which is just to show them what we have done so far. It was a progress report, and I’ve talked to several people in class about it, we all agree that we are not supposed to be graded on WHETHER OR NOT THEY LIKE OUR WORK OR NOT, they are supposed to grade us on how much we’ve done. In their feedback for me, they makes suggestions of what i should have done and it’s like??? well you didn’t tell anyone what you wanted from this presentation, so are we supposed to just KNOW? Also, they literally could not muster a convincing reason for FAILING PEOPLE in the class on that mid term presentation!! and 5 fucking people went to the department head about their shit experience in the course, and if worst comes to worst, i WILL be the sixth person to go the department head.
last time i talked to one of them--frances-- about my project, she obviously didn’t like my unfinished rough cut of my short film, and decided that it was garbage based on that. Like i didnt do sound editing, colour correction--ANYTHING yet, i just put together some raw footage!!! she hasn’t even SEEN the entire thing, and I’m drawing inspiration from a director with very volatile and strange visual style and editing! A director that she obviously isn’t at all familiar with!!! (its wong kar wai, btw) SHIT even some of his films are hard to appreciate if you are not used to his kind of cinematography, and he’s a internationally acclaimed director that shoots his films on A. BUDGET, with PROFESSIONAL ACTORS WHO ARE MOVIE STARS, professional cinematographer and a decent sized crew of professional people, AS WELL AS BOUGHT EQUIPMENT THAT PROBABLY DOESN’T BREAK ALL THE TIME. Whereas im a film student shooting with no crew, no help from my goddamn profs that are supposed to supervise our projects, and shitty ass equipment that does not WORK sometimes (it’s such a thrill to work with audio equipment because oh bOY sometimes the shotgun mic just doesn’t record for no reason lol).
Honestly ive been really fucking depressed bc of this project, well im depressed in general but there is also this fucking project that makes it worse but its fine lol, and bc of that i had a hard time even touching the project. I reshoot two core scenes last Sunday and that’s all i fucking did. We are supposed to present our WIP for final feedback this week before presenting our work for real next week, and obviously im not ready since i can’t edit this film i just can’t. Every time i opened the editing program, and started editing i just couldn’t do it after a while cause i felt like no matter what i do its gonna be horrible and i will get a bad grade on my final project. I started to doubt my script, i started to doubt everything, and i couldn’t edit anything after Frances basically passed final value judgement on a VERY ROGH AND WIP version or something she doesnt like or yet to understand. And its stupid, but because of that fear of not achieving what i wanted to achieve, i couldn't do much editing. After I talked to Frances 1-2 weeks ago, i accommodated by planning to make a video essay to give context to the short film i will be screening either fucking way. I was gonna do a paper before deciding to concentrate on shooting the film. Frances straight up told me that i shouldn’t even show this film, she’s like “do you want to show people this?”, yes bitch i actually do, and how do u know its gonna be shitty when it’s NOT EVEN close to finished???
im just ranting here so i can calm myself down a little before going to see her today. I had good experiences in three of her classes before (got all As from them), PLUS she WROTE my reference letters for grad school, so i dont really want to end up in her bad book; but i know shes not the best prof and i took issue with how she structured her courses before (dude i learned NOTHING from screenwriting class, cause she just goes through the processes of writing a ten page screenplay and that’s fucking it. it doesnt matter i got an A from that course i just didnt learn much). Believe me, i was raised to not question teachers’ teaching methods and authorities, and if i take issues with profs and teachers it’s usually because they have done something seriously wrong. I dont think they gonna budge on giving me a better grade for mid term, but at least i want her to know what my main argument is in the video essay, just so i know if she has any constructive criticisms to give, because there is no point showing her a slightly updated version of the rough cut lol. im gonna have to muster all the strength i have to at least make the video essay by tomorrow morning to show to the class, and maybe a good clip from the film. Jesus Fucking Christ, i actually need this course to graduate cause its a 400 level 4th year course. Even tho i dont think im gonna fail i kinda want a decent grade for this course lol.
0 notes
Text
WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND November 16, 2018 - Fantastic Beasts, Widows, Instant Family, Green Book
I didn’t do too bad last week, although other than Universal’s The Grinch, the new wide releases got spanked by either bad reviews, bad marketing or general moviegoer ennui. That should change this weekend with the next movie in one of Warner Bros’ more successful franchises.
But before we get to that big release for the weekend, I want to give a little extra attention to the movie which is currently my #1 movie of the year, and that is Peter Farrelly’s GREEN BOOK (Universal).
Yes, you read that right, that’s Peter Farrelly of the Farrelly Brothers, famed for their low-brow comedies that began with Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary, and then petered out as the ‘00s turned into the PC word that it is today. Needless to say (but I’m gonna say it anyway), Green Book is a completely different beast – it’s a buddy road comedy set in 1962, as Viggo Mortensen’s Italian bouncer Tony Vallelonga (or “Tonylip”) takes on the role of driver and bodyguard for a black piano prodigy, played by Mahershala Ali, as he tours the racist Deep South.
I had already been hearing raves out of the Toronto International Film Festival (where it won the coveted People’s Choice award), but I wasn’t convinced until I saw the movie myself for the first time. I’m a little hesitant to say too much about the film, because part of the joy is just watching these two fantastic actors commit to each of their equally-compelling characters. Tony is a loud-mouth take-no-crap Bronx native who is just looking for a job to take on while the Copacabana club where he works is renovated. Dr. Don Shirley (Ali) is an educated, eloquent and well-mannered classical musician who can’t be more different from Tony.
As they travel down to the Deep South, Tony starts to see the racism that Shirley has faced his entire life—being invited to play at fancy restaurants and club where he’s not even allowed to use the same facilities as the wealthy and snobbish clientele. What’s amazing about their story (which is based on actual people) is that as you watch them arguing and eventually bonding (as happens in the best of buddy comedies), you find yourself relating to both of them, even if you have no direct connections to either.
Mortensen is such a charming and entertaining character that it’s hard not to love him, but the way that Ali makes you feel for the way his character is a lonely outcast, whether it’s around white or other black people, just makes this film such a unique experience.
I’m honestly shocked by what a great film Farrelly has made here, a joyfully entertaining piece of fictionalized history that does a better job exploring racism and the relationship between races. I thought Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman and Barry Jenkins’ if Beale Street Could Talk, but they also were needlessly preachy, whereas films like Green Book and The Hate U Give force you to think about these things without necessarily hitting you over the head. Frankly, I feel that we’ve gone backwards from all of the great inroads made in race relations in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, but it’s good to have reminders like this that there was a time when things were much worse.
So far this year, no other movie has had quite the effect on me in terms of entertaining and moving me. Green Book is not only the best movie I’ve seen this year, but also my favorite. Definitely go see this!
Rating: 10 out of 10
I’ll get to the rest of this week’s movies after the jump…
FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD (Warner Bros.)
As mentioned above, the big movie of the weekend is the next movie in the “Wizarding World” franchise that began with the eight movies based on JK Rowling’s popular book about boy wizard Harry Potter (as played by Daniel Radcliffe). This is also the first sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which Rowling wrote for the screen based on the Newt Scamander wizard character (played by Eddie Redmayne). The original Fantastic Beasts opened on this same weekend in 2016 to $74.4 million and grossed a more-than-respectable $234 million domestically, plus double that amount overseas, so it made perfect sense for Warner Bros. to want to continue the series, and it’s already been noted that they want to make five movies total.
The Crimes of Grindelwald is a straight-up sequel with Scamander travelling to Paris with his magical colleagues, played by Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler and Alison Sudol, to fight the evil wizardy of Grindelwald, as played by Johnny Depp. Characters played by Zoe Kravitz and Carmen Ejogo are also featured more fully, but the real draw might be that the movie introduces the younger version of Professor Dumbledore, as portrayed by Jude Law. This is probably Law’s most prominent roles in a while with last year’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword from Guy Ritchie being a box office dud, and it’s been seven years since Law made the sequel to Sherlock Holmes, also with Ritchie and with Robert Downey Jr.
Reviews for the Fantastic Beasts sequel have been mixed (at best), some of that due to the Johnny Depp factor, because Warner Bros. – who yanked Brett Ratner’s credit off their movies as soon as the #MeToo movement broke out – failed to read the room after the accusations against Depp from his former wife Amber Heard (who stars in the upcoming Warners movie Aquaman.) Even before that ugly affair, Depp’s star had begun to falter, although you probably couldn’t tell by last year’s movies with the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean grossing $172.5 million domestically and another $622 million overseas. Depp also appeared in Murder on the Orient Express, which also did well, maybe because his character was murdered pretty quickly in the film. Depp’s recent film with Heard, the long-delayed London Fields, was a big-time bomb last month, and it doesn’t seem like audiences are as interested in seeing him in movies. (Even Disney has decided to reboot Pirates without Depp.)
Still, there’s that rabid JK Rowling fanbase that has been kept fed with steady visits to the Wizarding World at Universal Studios, not to mention the Cursed Child stageplay which arrived on Broadway earlier in the year. The success of both ventures has shown that the Harry Potter craze has not died down without new books or movies based on them. (It’s also good to note that exactly half the original Harry Potter movies opened this exact weekend in November with openings ranging between $88.4 million and $125 million, and the latter was eight years ago when ticket prices were significantly cheaper.)
What else can I say? Well, there’s the IMAX factor which helps up the average ticket price for those going to see the movie. There’s the usual caveat about their being too many family films already in theaters with another one opening next Wednesday.
Essentially, there are a lot of factors that need to be applied to The Crimes of Grindelwald, but the fanaticism of the Harry Potter fanbase should endure over any negatives, including the reviews. With previews on Tuesday night (which will be rolled into Friday), this should still open slightly bigger than the first movie, maybe closer to $80 million than $70 million. Even so, it’s going to have a tougher road to $200 million with Disney’s Ralph Wrecks the Internet opening next Wednesday. (The original Fantastic Beasts dropped 39% in its second weekend against Disney’s Moana, and that wasn’t a sequel to a $189 million blockbuster hit.)
ED’s Review of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
WIDOWS (20thCentury Fox)
Offering the first bit of counter-programming against the Wizarding World juggernaut is the new movie from British filmmaker Steve McQueen, whose previous film 12 Years a Slavewon Best Picture about five years back. It grossed $56.7 million domestically with a strong expansion plan from Fox Searchlight that more than made back the movie’s $20 million budget, greatly helped by the $131 million overseas.
For his fourth film, an adaptation of Lynda La Plante’s recently-released novel, McQueen went over to the parent Fox, presumably to have an even bigger budget for his first heist film, which is just as star-studded as 12 Years a Slave. He also had help with the adaptation from author Gillian Flynn, whose own bestselling novel Gone Girlwas turned into a hit thriller by no less than David Fincher. The basic premise is that a group of thieves end up being killed in a heist-gone-wrong by the police after stealing $2 million from a local thug who comes to the wife of the gangleader to get the money back… or else!
McQueen’s latest has a lot going for it, not just the fact that it’s a crime action-thriller as opposed to a weepy historical drama about slavery – frankly, I’m surprised 12 Years a Slave did that well, but that’s a testament to the power of Searchlight.
Really, the biggest factor that will help Widows is its cast, which includes a number of Oscar winners, most importantly the amazing Viola Davis, whose amazing supporting role in Denzel Washington’s Fences finally won her that Oscar. That also grossed $57 million after a late December platform release, and if you put that next to the grosses of McQueen’s last film, that’s a pretty good barometer for Widows. (The biggest difference is that this is opening nationwide in 3,000 theaters rather than trying to build word-of-mouth.)
Davis’ husband is played by Liam Neeson, who has done his fair share of action-thrillers, and though he has a smaller role in this, his presence is still felt. After Davis, a lot of people will be talking about the performances by Brian Tyree Henry (star of the hit FX series Atlanta) and Daniel Kaluuya, the Oscar-nominated star of Jordan Peele’s Get Out last year and Marvel’s Black Panther. If Davis isn’t able to get African-American males into theaters, than these two guys should help. There’s also Colin Farrell, the Irish actor who seems to be having a bit of a resurgence in recent years with roles in last year’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer and Roman J. Israel, Esq., neither huge moneymakers but Farrell received many accolades. (And of course, he starred in the original Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Davis’ partners in crime are played by Michelle Rodriguez from the Fast and Furious movies; Australian actor Elizabeth Debicki, who appeared in films like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and others but who really gives a breakout performance here; and the Tony-winning actor Cynthia Erivo, who just blew me away in Bad Times at the El Royale. Then there’s the parental units (of Farrell and Dubecki’s characters respectively) played by Robert Duvall and Jacki Weaver.
Just from that cast alone, it’s obvious why Fox is hoping this will be a good play for Oscar night, especially with the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody receiving mixed reviews and possibly only getting Rami Malek a nomination.
Widows should be a good counter-point to Fantastic Beasts and with few other movies (including Tyler Perry’s Nobody’s Fool) popping with African-American moviegoers, especially not males, I can see Widows bringing out a solid audience of those not interested in other films. I’m not sure it will quite make $20 million this weekend, but it should make a play for third place against Bohemian with $15 to 17 million. Its biggest hurdle is MGM’s sequel Creed II opening on Wednesday which may steal away some of its business, but word-of-mouth could make it a good alternative over Thanksgiving and in the slower weeks to come.
Mini-Review: I’m not sure I’ve ever been as surprised by the evolution of a director as I am with Steve McQueen going from his Oscar-winning work on 12 Years a Slave to Widows. Mind you, I was already a fan of McQueen from his first film Hunger, but I never expected he’d be able to do something like this.
Widows begins with a heist as Liam Neeson’s Harry Rawlings and his colleagues are in a van after a robbery, which cuts back to a quieter time between Harry and his wife Veronica (Viola Davis). It’s a fairly jarring introduction to the characters, especially the way McQueen films the demise of Rawlings and his gang. The Chicago’s 18thward is in the midst of a heated political race between Colin Farrell’s Jack Mulligan, a second-gen politician, and Brian Tyree Henry’s Jamal Manning, who happens to be involved in the city’s crime sector along with his sadistic brother Jatemme (Daniel Kaluuya). Turns out that the money Rawlings stole belonged to the Mannings, and Jamal threatens Veronica that she needs to repay his $2 million in a week or face the consequences. Veronica turns to the wives of the other dead thieves (played by Michelle Rodriguez and Elizabeth Dubecki) to enact a plan for Harry’s next big job, which is to rob Mulligan.
Needless to say, with a cast this good, you’re going to end up with a number of brilliant performances. While Davis is a clear stand-out, Dubecki is also impressive as a woman used to being pampered who has to start earning her own living as an escort. Kaluuya is also quite a scene-stealer as the homicidal Manning enforcer, and I wish there was more of him in the movie. Brian Tiree Henry is equally good, and Colin Farrell continues to impress me, and the fact that Davis can be so memorable against so many other great performances (including her scene-stealing dog) shows her to still be at the top of her game. Robert Duvall and Jacki Weaver are also quite great without even having to try very hard.
On paper, this could have been a standard heist film, but McQueen thrives on the complexities of the story’s intricate plot to keep the viewer invested as we follow a number of stories at the same time. Where McQueen really thrives is at creating tension, from the opening set piece which leads to a slow-building thriller to the point where the actual robbery is just as nail-biting as anything I’ve seen on screen this year.
From the very beginning, McQueen has DP Sean Bobbit shoot the film in such an unconventional way. For example, when Jack Mulligan is having an argument inside his limo with his wife, the camera remains outside the car as it drives, something that gets more uneasy as you realize that the camera is just going to stay there for a very, long time.
If you’re a fan of the heist genre, Widows delivers on everything promised by Ocean’s 8 earlier this year, a strong female-centric crime film that’s up there with what’s been done by men in the genre. In this case, McQueen may have clinched himself a second Oscar nomination with his brilliant work at pulling this amazing cast together into such a compelling story.
Rating: 8.5/10
INSTANT FAMILY (Paramount)
If Green Book wasn’t opening this weekend, I would probably give this new dramedy from Paramount a bit of extra lip-service, because it’s also quite a wonderful movie. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have quite the buzz that the Peter Farrelly period comedy does (for reasons mentioned above).
This is the new movie co-written and directed by Daddy’s Home director Sean Anders, and it once again teams him with Mark Wahlberg, the star of those two comedy hits. The big difference with Instant Family is that it’s based on Anders actual experiences adopting three kids, and it’s not a silly Will Ferrell comedy like the Daddy’s Home movies. That may or may not be a good thing when you realize that the first one of those movies made $150 million while the second made over $100 million, and that was just domestically. The sequel opened a little earlier in November to $29.6 million, and those kinds of returns guaranteed Paramount wanted to stay in bed with Anders, especially with Wahlberg as lead.
Wahlberg has built quite a side career for himself as an actor in comedies with hits like the two Daddy’s Home movies, and at least the first Ted comedy, which had him playing the straight man to a Seth MacFarlane-voiced stuffed bear. The original movie in 2012 did substantially better than its sequel three years later, but Ted 2still made $81 million domestically. Wahlberg’s real break into comedies probably began with his earlier teaming with Will Ferrell for Adam McKay’s The Other Guys, which also broke $100 million domestically.
Playing Wahlberg’s wife is Rose Byrne, the talented actor who broke out with comedies like Paul Feig’s Bridesmaids and Spy, and she recently starred in the Nick Hornby adaptation of Juliet, Naked (which you may recall is another one of my favorite movies of the year). The other part of the equation is popular actor Octavia Spencer, who has received three Oscar nominations, winning for The Help in 2012, a movie that co-starred Widows’ Viola Davis. She teams with popular comic Tig Notaro as adoption agency counselors, and the film also stars breakout star Isabela Moner, who co-starred with Wahlberg in the last Transformers movie, also for Paramount. So basically Instant Familyis keeping it all in the family.
I’m probably not going to review Instant Family since it’s been quite a few weeks since I saw it, but it’s a wonderful movie, a real crowd-pleaser – warm, sweet and funny with Rose Byrne being her usual wonderful self. The fact that it’s loosely-based on Anders’ own story makes it even more compelling, and I hope that people seek it out (not hard since it will be in 3,000 theaters across the country). This might be more of a sleeper that does better as people get into the holiday spirit, as it has a little bit of that in the story.
That said, I’m worried this will be hurt more by Fantastic Beasts than vice versa, and that might mean that it will have to rely on word-of-mouth to get it through the rest of the month. If no one goes to see the movie this weekend, then that’s going to be hard. Because of this (and how crowded the marketplace is), I could see this making between $13 and 15 million this weekend but maybe it’ll make its way to $50 or 60 million if it can get past the slew of Thanksgiving releases.
Also expanding nationwide into about 800 theaters is Matthew Heineman’s A Private War, starring Rosamund Pike as war journalist Marie Colvin, which I personally feel deserves at least another Oscar nomination for the Gone Girlstar. We’ll see if it expands wide enough and gets enough attention to get into the top 10, but I think it will end up somewhere in the $1 to $1.5 million range, not enough to get into it. There’s a chance Joel Edgerton’s Boy Erased may expand further this weekend, as well.
This week’s Top 10 should look something like this…
UPDATE: Changing some of the numbers below, since actual theater counts have been released and many of the returning films (including A Star is Born) have lost way more theaters than I expected. Basically, theaters are dumping movies to open up screens for this week’s offerings as well as the new Thanksgiving movies on Wednesday. (Also, Widows is opening in fewer theaters than originally estimated.)
1. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (Warner Bros.) - $77.8 million N/A
2. The Grinch (Universal) - $38.4 million -43%
3. Bohemian Rhapsody (20thCentury Fox) - $18 million -45%
4. Widows (20thCentury Fox) – $15.5 million N/A
5. Instant Family (Paramount) - $14.4 million N/A
6. A Star is Born (Warner Bros.) - $5.3 million -35%
7. Overlord (Paramount) - $5.3 million -48%
8. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (Disney) - $4.7 million -53%
9. The Girl in the Spider’s Web (Sony) - $3.7 million -53%
10. Nobody’s Fool (Paramount) - $2.8 million -58%
LIMITED RELEASES
We’re just one week away from Thanksgiving, which means we’re getting down to the nitty-gritty in terms of the first group of awards and nominations, which will take place in the weeks following Thanksgiving.
Apparently, the Coen Brothers’ Western anthology THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (Netflix)opened a week earlier than planned in three theaters in New York, L.A. and San Francisco. It would have been nice if someone from Netflix bothered to tell me, so I could have included it in last week’s column. Anyway, it will open in more theaters and be streaming this Friday, so I might as well write more about it, since I never got around to writing about it at the New York Film Festival. The title character is played by Tim Blake Nelson, but don’t get used to him, as he’s only the star of the first segment, which is also the best. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is very much an anthology film that allows the Coens to explore that genre further than they have in the past with a varied mix of stories of different lengths featuring a cast that includes James Franco, Liam Neeson, Brendan Gleeson, Stephen Root, Tyne Daley and Zoe Kazan. The segment with the latter is the longest, and it takes a while to get going, but I especially liked the segment which starred Tom Waits, mostly by himself as a gold prospector. The movie will be streaming on Netflix on Friday, but I do recommend seeking it out in theaters, and in New York, at least, it will be playing at the IFC Center and the Landmark on 57thStreet.
Another New York Film Festival (and Venice) premiere is Julian Schnabel’s latest film AT ETERNITY’S GATE (CBS Films), which stars Willem Dafoe as painter Vincent Van Gogh and Oscar Isaac as Paul Gauguin, who become friends during Van Gogh’s days in the south of France. Rupert Friend plays Vincent’s brother Theo Van Gogh, and the film also stars Mathieu Amalric (from Schnabel’s earlier film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), Emmanuelle Seigner and Niels Arestrup. Honestly, I wasn’t a particularly big fan of the film, which involved a lot of noodley shots of Van Gogh walking through fields ala Terrence Malick, but it does have some good moments and my favorite involved Dafoe’s Van Gogh having a philosophical debate with a priest played by Mads Mikkelsen. Regardless, it opens in New York and L.A. (and possibly other cities) on Friday.
From this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, Bill Oliver’s Jonathan (Well GO USA) stars Angel Elgort in a dual role as two brothers living separate lives inside the same body, taking shifts in who has control, something that becomes a problem when they both fall for the same woman, played by Suki Waterhouse.
Just when I thought I’ve seen everything, there’s also a documentary about Marie Colvin (the subject of A Private War) opening in New York and L.A. this Friday as Chris Martin’s Under the Wire (Abramorama) features actual footage of Colvin and photographer Paul Conroy sneaking into Syria in Feb. of 2012.
From Sundance comes Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Dweck’s doc The Last Race(Magnolia) that follows a Long Island stock car racetrack that’s being threatened by redevelopment. It will open at the IFC Center in New York, the Monica Film Center in Santa Monica and in Seattle, but it will also have special screenings on Weds night in select cities – you can find out more about those special screenings on the Official Site.
After premiering at Doc-NYC, Ofir Trainin’s Family in Transition (Abramorama) will open in L.A. this Friday and in New York on Nov. 23. It shares the story of a family in Nahariya, Israel whose lives change after the father announces his decision to transition into a woman. This remarkably timely film definitely will make people change their minds about transgender people and what they (and their loved ones) go through after making that decision.
Opening on Weds at New York’s Quad Cinema is legendary documentarian Claude Lanzmann’s final film Shoah: Four Sisters (Cohen Media), which continues his series of interviews conducted in the ‘70s with four women from Eastern Europe who detail their experiences at the end of WWII. The four segments – The Hippocratic Oath, The Merry Flea, Noah’s Ark, and Baluty-- It’s shown in two parts with each 2+-hour part featuring two of the sisters. The film should roll out to other areas over the next few weeks, as well.
At the Museum of the Moving Image, Syrian documentarian Talal Derki’s Of Fathers and Sons (Kino Lorber) will screen through December with Derki appearing on Friday night. For this one, he spent two years with a radical Islamist family made-up of a father and his two sons. It won the World Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this year.
As far as this weekend’s genre films, you’ll be able to see Daniel Goldhaber’s thriller Cam in select Alamo theaters (as well as on Netflix—see below), but IFC Midnight’s offering this weekend is Duncan Skiles’ The Clovehitch Killer, which will play midnight screenings at New York’s IFC Centerand in L.A., as well as be available On Demand. It stars Charlie Plummer (All the Money in the World) as Tyler Burnside, a Boy Scout and church volunteer whose father (Dylan McDermott) is a community leader in their quiet Kentucky town, where ten women have been tortured and murdered by a psychopath known as Clovehitch ten years earlier. Tyler suspects his father might be that killer.
Other films out this weekend include David Levinson’s Welcome Home (Vertical/DirecTV), starring Aaron Paul and Emily Ratajkowski as a couple who end up in a love triangle with a handsome Italian who vies for her attention. John Travolta stars in the action thriller Speed Kills (Saban Films), directed by Jodi Scurfield, in which he plays a millionaire speedboat champ who also happens to be a drug trafficker. It co-stars Kellan Lutz, Matthew Modine and Jennifer Esposito and is in select theaters and On Demand Friday. Lastly, there’s Nijla Mu’min’s drama Jinn (Orion Classics) about a teen girl whose mother converts to Islam. It opens in theaters Thursday, but is On Demand on Friday.
Also if you’re an Atlanta-based genre fan, you might want to check out the Buried Alive Film Festival, which runs from Nov. 14 through 17, which opens with Joe Badon’s The God Inside My Ear and includes other features and shorts that haven’t played at many other festivals.
STREAMING
Besides the Coen Brothers’ THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (mentioned above), one of Netflix’s big streaming premieres this weekend is Daniel Goldhaber’s horror-thriller CAM (also playing at select Alamo theaters), co-written by Isa Mazzei, who used her own experiences as a “camgirl.” If you don’t know what that is, then good for you, you don’t regularly watch porn, but essentially, a camgirl is a sex worker who does things on camera for money. In this case, it stars Madeline Brewer (from Orange is the New Black) as a camgirl who wakes up one day to find out that someone who looks exactly like her has taken over her channel. I haven’t seen it yet (despite it playing many festivals), but it’s definitely on my list to see when it streams on Netflix Friday. As an animal lover, I’m also looking forward to the upcoming docuseries DOGS(Netflix), exec. produced by Amy Berg, director of great docs like Deliver Us from Evil, West of Memphis and An Open Secret. Also, if you’re a fan of the series Narcos, it’s back this Friday with Narcos Mexico, which takes place, you guessed it, in Mexico.
REPERTORY
METROGRAPH (NYC):
This is a big weekend for the Metrograph, as they’re kicking off a number of retrospectives, probably in hopes those who have time off over Thanksgiving will venture down to the Lower East Side for a few of them.
First up on Friday is a screening of Joseph Mankiewicz’s The Barefoot Contessa, starring Ava Gardner and Humphrey Bogart, on a 35mm print, as part of the Academy at Metrograph series. This one is hosted by Karina Longworth, creator and host of the You Must Remember This podcast, signing copies of her book Seduction: Sex, Lies and Stardom In Howard Hughes’s Hollywood. There are two screenings of this on Friday night but 7pm screening is already sold out.
Also beginning Friday is a rare series dedicated to actor and filmmaker Bill Duke with films that range from his 1991 film A Rage in Harlem and 1992’s Deep Coverto films in which he appeared like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Commando (1985) and Predator (1987)to more recent films like Panos Costamos’ recent Nicolas Cage thriller Mandy. (Unfortunately, Duke himself will not be appearing in person as previously planned.)
On Saturday, the Metrograph kicks off a retrospective of Chinese filmmaker Wang Bingwhich just happens to coincide with Lincoln Center’s own Wang-Bing: The Weight of Experience (see below), both sponsored by the Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation. The Metrograph’s series will include Fengming (2007)Three Sisters (2012), Til Madness Do Us Part (2013), Ta’ang and Bitter Money (both from 2016). Warning: Most of his films run from 2 ½ hours to almost four hours.
On Monday, the Metrograph begins a series dedicated to the work of cinematographer Darius Khondji, a series that will include screenings of David Fincher’s Se7en (1995), Danny Boyle’s The Beach (2000), James Gray’s The Immigrant (2013) and The Lost City of Z (2016) and even Bong Joon-ho’s Okja (2017). The series also includes three of Jean-Piere Jeunet’s films including his debut with Marc Caro, Delicatessen (1991), one of my all-time faves The City of Lost Children (1995) and of course, Alien: Resurrection (1997). This runs through Thanksgiving weekend, and it’s a great chance to see some of these films on the big screen.
FILM FORUM (NYC):
The recently-renovated downtown theater continues its Ida Lupino 100 series through Thanksgiving, and those lucky kids who attend Film Forum Jr. can see Don Chaffey’s Jason and the Argonauts (1963).
EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):
Friday there’s a Bruno Mattei double feature of Shocking Dark (1989)and Robowar (1988), while on Sunday, it screens the new 4k restoration of Wim Wender’s Wings of Desire (1987 – Janus Films).
AERO (LA):
American Cinemateque’s other theater is in the midst of its Cinema Italian Style 2018 program featuring many recent Italian films making their North American premieres… but not repertory, so… next!
QUAD CINEaMA (NYC):
Claude Lanzmann’s Cinema of Remembrance continues to coincide with the release of Lanzmann’s final film Shoah: Four Sisters (see above).
IFC CENTER (NYC)
Doc-NYC is over, so it’s back to Late Night Favorites, this weekend showing Ridley Scott’s Alien(1979). Weekend Classicsis still taking the weekend off, but the Shaw Brothers Spectacularsthis weekend will be 1973’s The Blood Brothers. There’s two reasons right there to be in the West Village late at night this weekend.
LANDMARK THEATRES NUART (LA):
At midnight on Friday, you can see the late Wes Craven’s 1994 film Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.
FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER(NYC):
If you can’t get enough Wang Bing from the Metrograph’s retrospective, the Film Society is also commemorating the Chinese documentarian with The Weight of Experience, which will include his newest film, the eight-part Dead Souls, his debut West of Tracks (2002), as well as his single-shot film 15 Hours (2017). Wang Bing will be on-hand to discuss his films here, too, so I wish his handlers luck in getting him from the Lower East Side to the Upper West Side multiple times in the same weekend. (I do it a lot and it’s a pain in the tuchus.)
Also, to coincide with the master Japanese filmmaker Kore-Eda’s Shoplifters next week, the Film Society will be showing Six by Kore-Eda, including Maborosi(1995), After Life (1998), Nobody Knows (2004), Still Walking (2008), I Wish (2011) and Like Father, Like Son(2013). It’s a great Lway to catch-up before his Cannes-winning new film.
BAM CINEMATEK(NYC):
Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, they’ll be showing Janus Films’ 40thanniversary restoration of Chantal Akerman’s 1978 film Les Rendez-vous d’Anna.
MOMA (NYC):
The midtown museum continues its Modern Matinees: Douglas Fairbanks Jr. with The Exile (1947) on Thursday and Joy of Living (1938) on Friday. This series continues through December with weekday screenings at 1:30 PM.
MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):
The Coen Brothers Go West continues through the weekend with screenings of Raising Arizona,True Grit and Blood Simple. Also, I just want to give a shout-out to MOMI’s long-time creative director David Schwartz, who is moving on at the end of the month after an astounding 33 years (!), to be replaced by the equally qualified Eric Hynes. Maybe I should get out to Astoria before month’s end, huh?
That’s it for this week. Next week… Thanksgiving! It will be celebrated with the release of two anticipated sequels, Disney’s Ralph Wrecks the Internet and MGM’s Creed II, plus a new Robin Hood and other films expanding wide. Since most of them will be out on Wednesday, I’m gonna have to get crackin’ on next week’s column right away.
0 notes
Text
How Kevin Alejandro transformed his body and became the fittest cop on the force in ‘Lucifer’
Playing a police officer has become second nature for actor Kevin Alejandro.
During his 15-year career, the Texas-born actor has appeared as some type of law enforcement official on the medical-drama Grey's Anatomy, the sci-fi series Heroes, the romantic-comedy Wake, the cop-drama series Golden Boy, the FBI procedural Eleventh Hour, the mystery series The Returned, and in a fan-favorite role as Detective Nate Moretta on the gritty cop-drama Southland. As far as casting directors are concerned, the guy just looks like a cop.
[RELATED1]
And throughout that run of projects, Alejandro has kept himself in what he called “pretty good” shape. But for his most recent role as as Detective Daniel Espinoza on the FOX series Lucifer—a fantasy police procedural centered around the comic book character created by Neil Gaiman—he took it to the next level.
Putting in the work
During his break from the show following the first season, Alejandro teamed up with his personal trainer Paolo Mascitti, adding more than 10lbs of muscle to his frame with an intense summer workout program. The producers of the show, which is in its third season and likely set for a fourth-season renewal, were so impressed that they incorporated his fitness transformation into the series.
Leslie Alejandro
“It was during the hiatus before the second season, I was going like six days a week with high-intensity training, and then mixing it up with heavy weightlifting,” Alejandro tells Men’s Fitness. “When I came back to the table read, the producers and showrunners saw me, saw the physical change, and were like, ‘Wow, dude. You're not the same—we're going to write that into the show and the character.'"
[PQ]
His inspiration to hit the gym so hard? “I wanted to see if I could possibly become the best physical version of myself,” Alejandro says. Bringing a new layer to his character, who Lucifer (Tom Ellis) lovingly calls “Detective Douche,” has been an added bonus.
“I wanted to represent a police officer in almost a superhero sort of way,” Alejandro says. “I have such respect, because of the amount of experience I've had playing detectives and police officers, and I wanted to show a complex version of a cop. Now, the show’s making his fitness part of the character. It’s just one aspect, but it adds something to who the character is and his personality, because being a cop is a physical job.”
FOX via Getty Images / Lucifer
'It’s 80% diet and 20% hitting the gym'
Mascitti designed Alejandro's summer workout programs to keep him moving constantly, whether through high-intensity interval workouts or superset-dominated lifting days with limited rest periods. Sometimes Alejandro would start with a high-rep, medium-weight movement (like a biceps curl), jump directly into 15 burpees, and then immediately start another lift—then jump onto the treadmill for a two-minute sprint. “I hated it at first,” Alejandro says. “But I never saw such fast and quick results until I started doing those. Those routines are probably my love-to-hate exercise kind of thing—but they really worked.”
To maintain all the progress he made over that first summer, Alejandro still heads to the gym five days per week for 60–90 minutes depending upon his schedule. Alejandro says he’s trying to bulk up a bit more than usual, so he’s been doing less high-intensity cardio work and more powerlifting—using high weight and low reps to build his frame.
[RELATED2]
For as much as hitting the gym helped his transformation, the actor said nutrition played a crucial role, too. Apart from the few times he’d sneak in a cheat meal—pizza, pasta, or Chinese food are his favorites—Alejandro ate as healthy as possible while downing five to six meals per day to maintain his energy and fuel his body.
“To me the real key to all of it is clean eating; in my opinion, it’s 80% diet and 20% hitting the gym,” Alejandro says. “I just got to the point where I made almost all of my meals at home, because you never really know what's in [restaurant food], and I wanted to really be in control with the quality of food that I was eating. You want to cheat, but it's relatively easy once you put yourself in the mindframe to avoid those late-night temptations. One thing I did was cook everything and put some of the meals in little plastic containers, so the moment I was hungry, I would throw it in the microwave; so avoiding those temptations became a lot easier for me.”
[RELATED3]
Transforming his body—and his career
Being on a television set for long days of shooting can make it easy for actors to slip up on their diets, especially when catered food spreads lurk around every corner. Alejandro counters the temptation by bringing some of his own healthy stuff to work. And when he does slip up, he has the perfect solution.
“I bought this thing called ‘The Rack,’ and I basically set up a little gym in my trailer,” Alejandro says. “It’s an all-in-one thing, so I use it as a dip bar, for pushups, curls—everything. I have dumbbells in there and a stability ball, so I can do any type of workout when I have time. I usually will do a full-body workout of some kind, a solid 30 minutes with no rest, that really gets things going. I’ll do it during lunch, and that will satisfy my mind and my body for that day—knowing I was able to get something in.”
S A T U R D A Y S with my damn trainer @paolomascitti
A post shared by Kevin M Alejandro (@kevinmalejandro) on Nov 18, 2017 at 1:58pm PST
Alejandro’s fitness transformation changed his character on Lucifer, and it’s also starting to make an impact on his overall career.
“I used to be insecure about staying in shape,” Alejandro says. “But it’s no longer an issue—it’s part of the way I live now. My managers now get calls from different casting people saying, ‘Wow, what the heck is Kevin doing to his body? He looks great. He’s a different dude.’ That helps give me confidence, and when you look at yourself in the way that you want to, it helps other people notice it, too, and, in some sense, confirm the hard work that you're doing.”
[RELATED4]
Leslie Alejandro
Getting behind the camera
What else does the future hold for Alejandro? He’s excited about doing more work on Lucifer, but he’s also interested in getting behind the camera more. Alejandro will direct an upcoming episode of Lucifer, and his short film, Bedtime Story, starring Patrick Fischler (Lost, Twin Peaks) and Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica, Lucifer), recently won the “Best in Festival” award and the “Best Director” award at the Hollywood Short Film Festival earlier in January.
“I hadn’t always wanted to do it, but it just sort of creeped up on me in the last few years,” Alejandro says. “I’ve always wanted to tell stories, and it started with me doing some little, fun, short film challenges, then it just started to sort of take control of me. I shadowed a couple directors on Lucifer, and then eventually I got accepted into the Warner Bros. Directors Program. I put up a little YouTube channel called Alejandro Films, and worked on some low-budget stuff. It’s been like another dream come true.”
During his lengthy career, Alejandro’s been able to work on shows with strong fanbases: Sons of Anarchy, True Blood, and Arrow. Alejandro sees the same passion from Lucifer fans.
“I have been fortunate enough to be part of what I think are really great shows with really good people, and the fans have all been fantastic on this,” Alejandro says. “It's always great to be able to do what you love, and be around other professionals who love it just as much as you. You become sort of a family in that sense. I love, love being on that set, it brings a smile to my face every day I get to go.”
Lucifer airs on FOX on Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.
Photo Team Credits:
Photographer LESLIE ALEJANDRO @lesliealejandro
Stylist WARREN ALFIE BAKER @alfiebakerstyle
Groomer LEIBI CARIAS @ CELESTINE using ORIBE @leibi_carias
Photo assistant ARSEN VASQUEZ @arsen_ist
Location RETROFIT @retrofitweho
Wardrobe provided by:
HERO SPORT @herosportofficial
ADIDAS @adidas
PUMA @puma
[RELATED5]
Celebrity workouts
Article source here:Men’s Fitness
0 notes
Text
How Kevin Alejandro transformed his body and became the fittest cop on the force in ‘Lucifer’
Playing a police officer has become second nature for actor Kevin Alejandro.
During his 15-year career, the Texas-born actor has appeared as some type of law enforcement official on the medical-drama Grey's Anatomy, the sci-fi series Heroes, the romantic-comedy Wake, the cop-drama series Golden Boy, the FBI procedural Eleventh Hour, the mystery series The Returned, and in a fan-favorite role as Detective Nate Moretta on the gritty cop-drama Southland. As far as casting directors are concerned, the guy just looks like a cop.
[RELATED1]
And throughout that run of projects, Alejandro has kept himself in what he called “pretty good” shape. But for his most recent role as as Detective Daniel Espinoza on the FOX series Lucifer—a fantasy police procedural centered around the comic book character created by Neil Gaiman—he took it to the next level.
Putting in the work
During his break from the show following the first season, Alejandro teamed up with his personal trainer Paolo Mascitti, adding more than 10lbs of muscle to his frame with an intense summer workout program. The producers of the show, which is in its third season and likely set for a fourth-season renewal, were so impressed that they incorporated his fitness transformation into the series.
Leslie Alejandro
“It was during the hiatus before the second season, I was going like six days a week with high-intensity training, and then mixing it up with heavy weightlifting,” Alejandro tells Men’s Fitness. “When I came back to the table read, the producers and showrunners saw me, saw the physical change, and were like, ‘Wow, dude. You're not the same—we're going to write that into the show and the character.'"
[PQ]
His inspiration to hit the gym so hard? “I wanted to see if I could possibly become the best physical version of myself,” Alejandro says. Bringing a new layer to his character, who Lucifer (Tom Ellis) lovingly calls “Detective Douche,” has been an added bonus.
“I wanted to represent a police officer in almost a superhero sort of way,” Alejandro says. “I have such respect, because of the amount of experience I've had playing detectives and police officers, and I wanted to show a complex version of a cop. Now, the show’s making his fitness part of the character. It’s just one aspect, but it adds something to who the character is and his personality, because being a cop is a physical job.”
FOX via Getty Images / Lucifer
'It’s 80% diet and 20% hitting the gym'
Mascitti designed Alejandro's summer workout programs to keep him moving constantly, whether through high-intensity interval workouts or superset-dominated lifting days with limited rest periods. Sometimes Alejandro would start with a high-rep, medium-weight movement (like a biceps curl), jump directly into 15 burpees, and then immediately start another lift—then jump onto the treadmill for a two-minute sprint. “I hated it at first,” Alejandro says. “But I never saw such fast and quick results until I started doing those. Those routines are probably my love-to-hate exercise kind of thing—but they really worked.”
To maintain all the progress he made over that first summer, Alejandro still heads to the gym five days per week for 60–90 minutes depending upon his schedule. Alejandro says he’s trying to bulk up a bit more than usual, so he’s been doing less high-intensity cardio work and more powerlifting—using high weight and low reps to build his frame.
[RELATED2]
For as much as hitting the gym helped his transformation, the actor said nutrition played a crucial role, too. Apart from the few times he’d sneak in a cheat meal—pizza, pasta, or Chinese food are his favorites—Alejandro ate as healthy as possible while downing five to six meals per day to maintain his energy and fuel his body.
“To me the real key to all of it is clean eating; in my opinion, it’s 80% diet and 20% hitting the gym,” Alejandro says. “I just got to the point where I made almost all of my meals at home, because you never really know what's in [restaurant food], and I wanted to really be in control with the quality of food that I was eating. You want to cheat, but it's relatively easy once you put yourself in the mindframe to avoid those late-night temptations. One thing I did was cook everything and put some of the meals in little plastic containers, so the moment I was hungry, I would throw it in the microwave; so avoiding those temptations became a lot easier for me.”
[RELATED3]
Transforming his body—and his career
Being on a television set for long days of shooting can make it easy for actors to slip up on their diets, especially when catered food spreads lurk around every corner. Alejandro counters the temptation by bringing some of his own healthy stuff to work. And when he does slip up, he has the perfect solution.
“I bought this thing called ‘The Rack,’ and I basically set up a little gym in my trailer,” Alejandro says. “It’s an all-in-one thing, so I use it as a dip bar, for pushups, curls—everything. I have dumbbells in there and a stability ball, so I can do any type of workout when I have time. I usually will do a full-body workout of some kind, a solid 30 minutes with no rest, that really gets things going. I’ll do it during lunch, and that will satisfy my mind and my body for that day—knowing I was able to get something in.”
S A T U R D A Y S with my damn trainer @paolomascitti
A post shared by Kevin M Alejandro (@kevinmalejandro) on Nov 18, 2017 at 1:58pm PST
Alejandro’s fitness transformation changed his character on Lucifer, and it’s also starting to make an impact on his overall career.
“I used to be insecure about staying in shape,” Alejandro says. “But it’s no longer an issue—it’s part of the way I live now. My managers now get calls from different casting people saying, ‘Wow, what the heck is Kevin doing to his body? He looks great. He’s a different dude.’ That helps give me confidence, and when you look at yourself in the way that you want to, it helps other people notice it, too, and, in some sense, confirm the hard work that you're doing.”
[RELATED4]
Leslie Alejandro
Getting behind the camera
What else does the future hold for Alejandro? He’s excited about doing more work on Lucifer, but he’s also interested in getting behind the camera more. Alejandro will direct an upcoming episode of Lucifer, and his short film, Bedtime Story, starring Patrick Fischler (Lost, Twin Peaks) and Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica, Lucifer), recently won the “Best in Festival” award and the “Best Director” award at the Hollywood Short Film Festival earlier in January.
“I hadn’t always wanted to do it, but it just sort of creeped up on me in the last few years,” Alejandro says. “I’ve always wanted to tell stories, and it started with me doing some little, fun, short film challenges, then it just started to sort of take control of me. I shadowed a couple directors on Lucifer, and then eventually I got accepted into the Warner Bros. Directors Program. I put up a little YouTube channel called Alejandro Films, and worked on some low-budget stuff. It’s been like another dream come true.”
During his lengthy career, Alejandro’s been able to work on shows with strong fanbases: Sons of Anarchy, True Blood, and Arrow. Alejandro sees the same passion from Lucifer fans.
“I have been fortunate enough to be part of what I think are really great shows with really good people, and the fans have all been fantastic on this,” Alejandro says. “It's always great to be able to do what you love, and be around other professionals who love it just as much as you. You become sort of a family in that sense. I love, love being on that set, it brings a smile to my face every day I get to go.”
Lucifer airs on FOX on Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.
Photo Team Credits:
Photographer LESLIE ALEJANDRO @lesliealejandro
Stylist WARREN ALFIE BAKER @alfiebakerstyle
Groomer LEIBI CARIAS @ CELESTINE using ORIBE @leibi_carias
Photo assistant ARSEN VASQUEZ @arsen_ist
Location RETROFIT @retrofitweho
Wardrobe provided by:
HERO SPORT @herosportofficial
ADIDAS @adidas
PUMA @puma
[RELATED5]
Celebrity workouts
from Men's Fitness https://www.mensfitness.com/life/entertainment/how-kevin-alejandro-transformed-his-body-and-became-fittest-cop-force-lucifer
0 notes
Text
I have feelings for a game no one cares about: Legend of Kay Anniversary
I just finished playing The Legend of Kay: Anniversary.
So basically, this was a game from 2005 that I would have played that crap out of as a kid, expect it was PS2 only (I was a Gamecube kid).
So about a year ago, they remastered it and released it on Wii U. Saw it at GameStop, got serious Ty the Tasmanian Tiger vibes from the box art, and bought it instantly. I had literally no knowledge of this game before then. Never even heard of it, and I don’t think most people have either. But I’m happy to say that I have enjoyed it!
So here comes the part where I needlessly analyze this game that only 6 people have played.
TONE/WRITING:
The game is about a cat named Kay whose land gets invaded by these nasty rats and gorillas who plan to enslave everyone. Kay, of course, takes it upon himself to stop it. The whole game takes place in a very Asian inspired world of martial arts and Buddhist temples.
But one thing that is striking is that this game is completely tone-deaf with it’s narrative direction. I get the vibe that they are three different departments with three different interpretations of what the story should feel like.
Voice Director/Casting Director: “This is for little kids, so that’s get an 8-year-old to voice our lead hero, and make all the other voices really goofy and cartoony!”
Script Writer: “Let’s go super edgey with this and make our characters swear and make brutal threats of murder and decapitation! Also, add in alcohol.”
Game Director/Story Director: “Let’s go for a good, balanced tone. One that’s kid friendly, but not goofy and soft. Think 4Kids Ninja Turtles maybe.”
Really though, it seems like no one was one the same page here. You get the feeling that the game wanted to be right-in-the-center tonally, but the voice acting got pulled in the extreme kiddy direction and the dialogue got pulled in the opposite direction.
Seriously, the titular hero, Kay, is voiced but what sounds like a very young child and it’s kinda embarrassing. Then, out of a nowhere, Kay starts swearing (in a very cringey edge-lord way, too) and it’s couldn’t feel more juxtaposed.
Who thought this was a good idea? Were these guys just riding off the Jak II hype wave? “Jak II was a platformer with swearing and it was successful!”
Maybe Jak II’s darker, humanoid world found a way to get away with it, but the world of Legend Of Kay, with its fuzzy fur-ball characters, just can’t pull it off.
GAMEPLAY
This game really feels straight out of 2005. Definitely from a bygone era. And you know what? It’s an era that I miss. Legend of Kay has what I would expect, and want. It’s a third-person mascot platformer with action and adventure elements. Platforming, powerups, puzzles, combat, combos, exploration, hidden goodies, and a bunch of other things that were standard tropes of the genre in the 2000′s before 3D platformers faded into unjust obscurity (only to be replaced by a tiring barrage of first-person shooters).
The final boss feels exactly the way a final boss should. It’s big, epic, and you feel the that whole game is leading up to it. It’s great sense of excitement when you’re fighting the last boss, and great sense of accomplishment when you beat it. Not saying that modern games don’t do this ever, but it seemed so much more like an unspoken rule back then. It was expected and you were disappointed if it wasn’t there. Over time, I feel like developers tried doing different things for their final boss, perhaps solely for the sake of “avoiding cliches.”
Let’s talk about combat. I think you can judge a game’s combat system on a “pre-Arkham” and “post-Arkham” scale. This game, of course, is pre-Arkham, and the combat system is pretty unique.
Basically, if you get some combos going, you enter a new state of combat, where you zip around freely from one foe to the next, simply to how Arkham would do it four years later (and get ridiculous amounts of praise for it). It’s hard to put into words, but there’s definitely an “aha!” moment when you get a feel for the combat. There’s certain flow to it that is almost zen.
While the combat does get repetitive and is unfair at times, it’s still a neat system that I’d like to see another game try to perfect.
You start with a sword, but you get two other weapons throughout the game: a big fat hammer and a set of Wolverine-esque claws. You be able to upgrade these weapons too, making them stronger which is a nice sense of progression. However, the claws are pretty useless, despite looking really cool. Immediately after you get them, you’ll use them to cut some bamboo and then will likely never see them again. They suck in battle and are less powerful than your standard sword. Why?
Moving on, there are definitely some weird gameplay moments of clunkyness that would have been unacceptable even at the time. For example: If you pull yourself up from a ledge grab on a moving platform, the platform will just move on without you and you’ll “pull” yourself up onto nothing and just fall through thin air.
There’s also these weird colored diamonds that you can collect to increase your score. But to my knowledge, your score does absolutely nothing. You get no bonus for having a high score. It is literally just a number. Why?
As mentioned earlier, the voice acting is just terrible, and it really hurts how long winded some of the characters can be. At times, they talk just to talk. They don’t say anything of real value. Almost every time you run into enemies, the game stops to give you a “cutscene.” And by “cutscene,” I mean you sit and watch the enemies stand still in a defensive stance while they say five or six lines about how they want to hurt/beat/kill you.
But in an odd way, part of me likes that. It gets too long and repetitive because it happens nearly every fight, but I like the attempt to make your enemies feel like characters with personalities.
Speaking of making enemies feel more real, Legend of Kay has an interesting obsession with perma-death. Seriously, if you kill an enemy, his corpse will lay there infinitely. You can leave an area, turn off the game, load back up the save, go back to the area, and his body will still be lying right where you killed it. It’s feels more grim that way. In other platformers of the time, you’d kill an enemy and their body would fade out or disappear in smoke. But in Legend of Kay, the perma-death makes you start to feel the weight of your actions. You can’t just kill something and sweep the body away to instantly forget about. Nope, that body will always be there. Dang, that is some heavy stuff for a 2005 platformer.
One last thing. Legend of Kay does something that I hate in video games. After you beat the game, loading your save file puts you right before the final boss forever. I hate that. I’ve always appreciated it when game will load you back to the hub-world and let you see the world in peace. At the very least, give me a level select list and let me replay levels I didn’t 100%. That brings me to my next point of discussion.
REMASTER:
I get the vibe that this 2015 remaster version had almost zero budget. Seriously, look at the back cover of the box. It looks like it was made in Photoshop in 10 mins. I’m not exaggerating.
It’s doesn’t look terrible, it just looks like it cost almost nothing to make. This is not the work of a graphic designer. This is one of the programmers making it the day before the game ships.
Look at the text! It’s a plain as it gets.
Compare it to the original 2005 box art.
I didn’t play the original, but I get the vibe that almost no changes were made to the gameplay. Certainly not any big ones. Aside from some up-res’d textures, this the original 2005 Legend of Kay, warts and all. There were a lot of little things here and there that would go a long way into improving the game. Simple things that I’d imagine would be easy fixes. But this ain’t Majora’s Mask on 3DS. This is a graphical fix only.
OVERALL
Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Legend of Kay: Anniversary. It’s not going to happen, but I would love to see a new Ledgend of Kay game in 2017 or sometime in the future. This is a relatively forgotten franchise that I think could use new life. In fact, you could use it’s obscurity to your advantage. The world and characters are already built, but there are hardly any preconceived notions to worry about.
As much as I hate this word, this experience was “nostalgic” for me in a special way. It’s a game I didn’t play as a kid, but feels 100% like a game I would have played as kid. It was great to take a trip back to 2000′s era gaming without re-playing through a game that I’ve already seen a hundred times. It’s a new experience from an old era. And boy, I do miss that era.
You’re alright, Legend of Kay. You’re alright.
(Now bring on Yooka-Laylee)
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
ketsatphattaivn
Két Sắt Phát Tài
brightideas
Image Works
catalina-fullmoon-blog
She'll eat you up
harleydavidsonstuff-blog
Untitled
babysejun
this boy is not a toy