#hypnotists trilogy

[forest-of-stories]

[Hey @venusdear (and other interested parties), I'm working on another Hypnotists fic! I started out with a Five Things format but realized along the way that I couldn't sustain it.]

Jack and his family are definitely hiding something, but the longer they’ve been in town, the more Felicity has suspected that they’re also hiding from something.

She can’t always tell what his parents and uncle argue about, but the phrases “low profile” and “no choice” come up a lot.  (So does the word “bloodline,” which Felicity has never heard anybody say in real life.)  The Magnuses seem to brace themselves whenever they walk to the mailbox or answer phone calls.  And Jack isn’t the only one who stays home in the evenings: outside of school and work hours, Felicity rarely sees any of them venture further than the backyard that faces her own.  Sometimes Mrs. Magnus brings a glass of wine outside with her and sits alone in one of the shabby lawn chairs, and once or twice, she looks like she’s crying.

Maybe all of this has something to do with the limo that picked Jack up from school a couple of weeks after the final chess tournament… and every day after that, even if it no longer parks in the bus lane.  Felicity knows that he’s not actually going to daily dentist appointments, but more than a few of the family’s arguments – before they started leaving the blinds closed almost constantly – have been about some doctor or other.  She hasn’t figured out how he fits in, either.

The next time she’s on Main Street, she notices that the town’s only pay phone is occupied –  and for the first time in years – by none other than Jack’s uncle.  For some reason, she thinks about spies in old movies, having secret conversations in phone booths.

“If I could be in two places at once, I would!” he says sharply.  He doesn’t seem to notice that she’s nearby.  “But I can’t take care of my local errands and make sure nothing happens to the rest of you, so you just have to look after each other.”

He replaces the receiver and turns around, and Felicity backs away just in time.  When she sees Arielle and Sofia emerge from the Smoothie Operator, each carrying a clear plastic cup piled with brightly colored slush, she picks up speed and hurries in the opposite direction.  The two of them haven’t spoken to her in several days, since she canceled their weekend plans at the last minute in order to, in Arielle’s words, “stalk a guy who doesn’t even like you back.”  She wishes that she could explain to them that the stakes are higher than a date to the next formal, but if she wants Jack to trust her, it certainly won’t help to share her suspicions with others, especially since they haven’t quite taken shape within her own mind.

#hypnotists trilogy #my stories

[venusdear]

Jax, trying to convince Wilson to join the group: You know... I thought it'd be good to have someone come along who's really... strong! Kira: And loud! Tommy: And grumpy! Felicity: And oblivious to reality! Wilson:

#source: ??? #incorrect quotes #the hypnotists trilogy #the hypnotists gordon korman #the hypnotists #jax opus #kira kendell #tommy cicerelli #felicity green #wilson devries #I'M BACK BETTER THAN EVERRR

[undinecissy]

The November's Film and Filming in 1987.

Although the magazine selected Maurice as its cover, Maurice was only rated two stars in its Reviews colomn(4 stars: outstanding, 3 stars: very good, 2 stars: good or interesting, 1 star: poor, 0: dud) and was dissected by a critic named RONALD BERGAN, saying Maurice had become a period piece with such risible lines as I'm an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort from the Eighties standpoint...and Ivory has been let down by his Jamesian (Forsterian?) lack of passion...

Maurice Hall falls in love with Clive Durham when they are undergraduates at Cambridge,but their relationship remains semi-Platonic. i.e. cuddling but no sex. When Clive marries Anne, Maurice feels betrayed. He is tortured by his desires, and goes to a hypnotist for help. One night, at Clive's country estate, Alec Scudder, the young under-gamekeeper, enters his bedroom and they make love. Maurice gradually decides to risk everything and commit himself to Alec.

‘GAYS grow up watching heterosexual movies ...watching Now Voyager and deciding whether they are Bette Davis or Paul Henreid.’ said Harvey Fierstein, author of Torch Song Trilogy. Maurice, at least, is a boy's own love story and it has a happy ending.

When E.M. Forster's 1914 homosexual novel was finally published in 1971, it had become a period piece with such risible lines as ' I'm an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort? James lvory and his co-writer, Cambridge-educated Kit Hesketh-Harvey, have been more faithful to Forster than he was to himself, but the above quote is now cleverly seen at an ironic distance, from our Eighties standpoint. Earlier in the film, the Dean of Trinity (Barry Foster, nice and dry) implants the idea by commenting on the ‘unspeakable love of the Greeks, during a tutorial on the Symposium. Sadly, although gay fiction has moved on, attitudes have not changed drastically. An American hypnotist (Ben Kingsley) advises Maurice to go and live in another country where homosexuality is legal because, 'the English will never understand human nature: This line brought applause from the understanding English preview audience.

Again, as in Heat and Dust, Quartet and Room With a View, the non-English team of Merchant and lvory (this time without Ruth Prawer Jhabvala) have looked at English hypocrisy, and meticulously recreated a stiffly hierarchical society. Maurice is as literate, subtly intellectual, pretty and precious as we have come to expect from them, something to be grateful for when our screens are dominated by trashy teen pics. It certainly is the type of film that should do well in America where audiences prefer to have their images of England reinforced by seeing beautiful manners and manor houses (Brideshead re-revisited), gorgeous costumes and decor, and abundant servants. Ivory coasts in a rather leisurely academic style from one well-dressed, tasteful scene to another, sugaring the pill of sexual repression and class distinction. Pierre LHomme's sometimes murky photography, covers the period in a glow of nostalgia.

But there is another kind of nostalgia at work, as in Prick Up Your Ears, which looks back in envy at a pre-AIDS world, when one didn't have to stop to slip on a condom when the under-gamekeeper entered one's window at night and joined one in bed. The prole (played with slightly wavering accent by Rupert Graves) hovers around in the background for ages before he and Maurice make it together. Unfortunately, this key moment in the hero's sexual liberation comes across as a bit of groping under the blankets in the dark. Once again, as in Room With a View, Ivory has been let down by his Jamesian (Forsterian?) lack of passion.

Unlike the 'clone look' of today, moustaches denote respectability in the film. After his youthful fling with Maurice-lying on the grass in each other's arms and punting together- Clive (Hugh Grant,another actor in the upper-class Rupert Everett mould) grows a moustache, marries and becomes a Tory candidate. When Maurice enters the City as a stockbroker, he begins to sport blond hair on his upper lip. Once sexually freed, the moustache vanishes.

With or without facial hair, newcomer James Wilby (replacing Julian Sands after shooting began), physically of the James Fox sort, kept reminding me of lan Carmichael as the innocent, often called Windrush, in those Boulting brothers comedies of the late Fifties. Most of the pleasure derives from the cameo performances by Simon Callow, a bearded schoolmaster, Mark Tandy, a corruptor of youth, Patrick Godfrey, a knowing butler called Simcox, Peter Eyre, a prissy parson and, yes, naturally, Denholm Elliott.

RONALD BERGAN

#James Wilby #James Ivory #Maurice1987 #Merchant Ivory #Film and Filming #magazine #Nov. 1987

[cinemacentral666]

The Element of Crime (1984)

Movie #1,142 • Ranking Lars von Trier #4

Let it be known that during this LVT filmography viewing I made the executive decision to only ever watch full director filmographies in chronological order. That had always been my preferred method, but I thought it would be best if, from time to time, I mixed up the order for [insert reasoning here]. This is the sixth or seventh Trier flick I've consumed (depending on how you want to count his two early shorter films and both the first two seasons of his Danish TV show) and it's essentially ground zero for the man's career. It's as weird and as bold of a debut feature that I've ever seen.

I feel like it's worth mentioning that I am now starting at the beginning and only going forward, because everything about this felt like a shock having digested some of his other work, most notably: his prime "Golden Heart Trilogy" of films (1996-2000) and his most recent work, 2018's The House That Jack Built. It felt like a different director and I say that in the most positive way. Some similarities arose, naturally. The sepia tones were visually similar to The Kingdom's (though more on this later). The conversational voice-over between main character Fisher and his Cairo hypnotist felt like a direct through-line to how the character of Virgil functions in Jack. And the general "frustrated search for something largely intangible that will ultimately disappoint if not fully horrify" evoked pretty much everything I've seen by the man in some way.

But structurally and compositionally, this felt like a whole new world. In fact, in many ways, it is a complete invention of Trier's. This "Europe" consists of fictional cities and towns where it's always night and everything is drenched in liquid. Despite a few grounding allusions, there is no specific state or country, just this cold, wet dystopia broadcast under yellowy sodium lights. The sets used and built for this are fantastic, each a kind of micro-labyrinth, a small mystery onto themselves cutting against the larger noir framework of the movie's plot: a man is on the hunt for a serial killer of small girls before he strikes again. Detective Fisher (Michael Elphick) navigates this spaces in a literal daze, as the entirety of the action is presented as the memory of a man, now an expatriate in Egypt, spilling his guts to a guy with a monkey on his shoulder. This is the first of two primates to get screen-time. The second, notably of the lower order, Fisher finds in a gutter, scared to death and confused, perhaps a stand in for the audience….

I believe that guy is a loris. To start your film with monkey and end it with a loris speaks to some theme of reverse evolution. The fascist nightmares we see are a product of no less. In fact, this – coupled with the elements of his earlier student work and up through his unfortunate "I'm a Nazi" comments – provide much of the framework for understanding Trier's motives on a larger scale. I do believe it goes beyond simple provocation and is worth explorin. I think he's trying to make sense of a world still drying out from the tsunami that was WWII. But I'll put a pin in it that for now before I get to watch the rest of his films.

The Element of Crime is not a movie made for easily digestible 'understanding' or textbook mystery reveals. Even when you get the gist/uncover the trick, he throws a mysterious postscript that shrouds things further. I'm still trying to make sense of these manic bald men…

LVT created a world here. His stellar framing, innovative shots, and glorious use of light all cut against the frantic, obtuse and occasionally obscene script in such a delightful way. Sure, maybe it's all an amalgamation of influence (certainly Andrei Tarkovsky and Lynch's Eraserhead among others) but it's still wholly more than the sum of its parts.

I took a weird route to get to this beginning. In a way, I'm glad I did, but I'm even more excited to keep going forward.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I’ll be counting down all of Lars Von Trier’s movies right here at @cinemacentral666 every Thursday through September 2023

#1984 #lars von trier director #crime #10 #🇩🇰 #michael elphick #esmond knight #meme lai #jerold wells

[docrotten]

HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM (1959) – Episode 134 – Decades Of Horror: The Classic Era

“New sensation! Woman’s head cut off! Read all about it! New sensation!” And don’t forget… Hypno-Vista! Join this episode’s Grue-Crew – Chad Hunt, Daphne Monary-Ernsdorff, and Jeff Mohr, along with guest host Steven Turek – as they discuss the quirky Horrors of the Black Museum (1959).

Decades of Horror: The Classic Era Episode 134 – Horrors of the Black Museum (1959)

Join the Crew on the Gruesome Magazine YouTube channel! Subscribe today! And click the alert to get notified of new content! https://youtube.com/gruesomemagazine

ANNOUNCEMENT Decades of Horror The Classic Era is partnering with THE CLASSIC SCI-FI MOVIE CHANNEL, THE CLASSIC HORROR MOVIE CHANNEL, and WICKED HORROR TV CHANNEL Which all now include video episodes of The Classic Era! Available on Roku, AppleTV, Amazon FireTV, AndroidTV, Online Website. Across All OTT platforms, as well as mobile, tablet, and desktop. https://classicscifichannel.com/; https://classichorrorchannel.com/; https://wickedhorrortv.com/

Synopsois: A frustrated crime columnist and thriller writer wants accurate crimes for his next book so he hypnotizes his assistant to make him commit the required crimes

  Director: Arthur Crabtree

Writers: Herman Cohen, Aben Kandel

Selected Cast:

Michael Gough as Edmond Bancroft

June Cunningham as Joan Berkley

Graham Curnow as Rick

Shirley Anne Field as Angela Banks

Geoffrey Keen as Superintendent Graham

Gerald Andersen as Dr. Ballan

John Warwick as Inspector Lodge

Beatrice Varley as Aggie

Austin Trevor as Commissioner Wayne

Malou Pantera as Peggy

Howard Greene as Tom Rivers

Dorinda Stevens as Gail Dunlap

Stuart Saunders as Strength-Test Barker

Steven Turek of the DieCast Movie Podcast joins the Decades of Horror Classic Era Grue Crew for this episode and, in fact, picked the topic of discussion, Horrors of the Black Museum, an American-British production distributed by American International Pictures and Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors. As Steven points out, even though the film is blatantly billed in the U.S. as containing Hypno-Vista, there is nary an example of hypnosis in the story. For Steven, this Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde mashup is all about inventive kills with a few gadgets thrown in for good measure.

Daphne points out that Horrors of the Black Museum is part of what has been called Anglo-Amalgamated’s Sadian trilogy along with Circus of Horrors (1960) and Peeping Tom (1960). From her point of view, it’s a fun film and she most enjoys Michael Gough’s arrogant character and the incredible kills.

Michael Gough’s scenery-chewing performance is what stands out for Chad in Horrors of the Black Museum. It’s an example of good acting coupled with a zany story with seemingly arbitrary twists and insane kills. Jeff agrees with Chad’s appraisal of Gough’s performance. For him, Horrors of the Black Museum is not a great movie, but it sure is fun watching Michael Gough chewing accompanied by the unique kills, the first of which takes place within the first three minutes of the movie.

Now, about that HypnoVista thing. A thirteen-minute prologue was added to the U.S. release by the folks at AIP as a Castle-esque gimmick. It featured hypnotist Emile Franchele and obliquely introduces the HypnoVista concept. Most streaming sources do not include this prologue, but it can be viewed here: Hypno-Vista intro of Horrors of the Black Museum  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWgU1lJHB4k 

At the time of this writing, Horrors of the Black Museum is available to stream from the Classic Horror Movie Channel, Wicked Horror TV, and Tubi.

Be sure to check out our very own Whitney Collazo and Daphne Monary-Ernsdorff as they join Steven and Alistair Hughes for a discussion of Hammer’s Vampire Lovers (1970) on Diecast Movie Podcast episode 125/Hammerama 7. Steve also conducts a very interesting interview of Whitney on episode 118.

Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era records a new episode every two weeks. Up next in their very flexible schedule is one chosen by guest host and special effects artist Dirk Rogers: Matango (Attack of the Mushroom People, 1963). Get ready for some body horror from Toho and Ishirô Honda!

Please let them know how they’re doing! They want to hear from you – the coolest, grooviest fans: leave them a message or leave a comment on the Gruesome Magazine YouTube channel, the site, or email the Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast hosts at [email protected]

To each of you from each of them, “Thank you so much for listening!”

Check out this episode!

[ao3feed--reylo]

Sundrop

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2XRm2b3

by SuperPsychoNutcase

Rey has lived a hard life that has left her with trust issues. When new coworker and, dare she say, friend, Rose Tico, suggests she go to a hypnotist, Rey hesitantly agrees. It's damn time she conquered her fears.

Words: 2079, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: F/M

Characters: Rey (Star Wars), Kylo Ren, Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rose Tico

Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey

Additional Tags: Guarded Rey, Hypnotist Kylo Ren, Rose just wants to be Rey's friend, Rose wants to help, Possessive Kylo Ren, stalker Kylo Ren, Obsessed Kylo Ren, Rey needs love, mental manipulation, Trigger words, Maybe a little bit of NonCon, not sure yet - Freeform, Making This Up As I Go

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2XRm2b3

#IFTTT #ao3feed #fanfic #Star Wars #Reylo #Kylo Ren #Rey

[sukuba]

42, 43, 52

42. favourite book(s)? i used to read soo much with my dad we would share the same book lmfao and we would usually read sum psychological thriller hehe.. so idk child 44 (the whole trilogy), the hypnotist... i don't memorize the names well sorry

43. favourite song ever? black by pearl jam i think.. sweat by skit&tijani also and sea by bts

52. something i’m talented at? idk i think im ok at painting and drawing LMFAO 😑😑... im good at waxing DKKDJDND

#waxed my wbole body two days ago it was chill #anon

[pandoraspocksao3]

Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Finn/Rose Tico, Poe Dameron & Rey Characters: Rey (Star Wars), Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Ben Solo, Kylo Ren, Rose Tico, Poe Dameron, Finn (Star Wars), Phasma (Star Wars), Armitage Hux, Leia Organa, Kaydel Ko Connix Additional Tags: Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, One Jedi Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Hypnotism, EMDR, Kylo Ren is a hypnotist, Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital Setting, Karma - Freeform, revenge?, This isn’t going to go the way you think…, Angst, reverse Anidala, Soulmates, Therapy, Past Life Regression, Reylo - Freeform, Eventual Smut, Rey is a psychiatric patient, Kylo has secrets

Summary:

Rey is a young college student taking a year off to deal with her anxiety and abandonment issues in counseling. She is referred to a specialist in hypnosis to deal with her recurring dreams. There is something vaguely familiar to her about Dr. Ben Solo… 

The beauty of souls it that they aren’t bound by time or space. Some cultures believe that the lessons you don’t learn in a past life you are condemned to repeat in your next life with the same people. These people are your soulmates. Your karma plays out again and again until these issues are resolved. 

Will Ben and Rey finally get it right, or will past agendas from their other lives prevent them from finding love?

FUNNY THING HAPPENED TONIGHT. I was trying to update this and leave it in “draft” form on AO3. Somehow it posted instead! I cannot figure out how to put the genie back into the bottle, so to speak! I meant to have this released in June, not right now!

Anyway, I just decided to go with it. I have no moodboard made up for it and I’m afraid it’s probably got some typos. I had the overall arc of the story written out, but not every chapter, so bear with me if I’m not updating it on a weekly basis (although I’ll do my best), assuming you have an interest in the AU topic I chose. 

*I’ve always had an interest in hypnotism and EMDR (I’ll explain EMDR more in the next chapter.) It’s something I actually have done and it’s an interesting if controversial treatment for patients with anxiety and PTSD. I’ve been out of the field for a long time, so I don’t know if they are still using it. 

My story will take certain liberties with both, but I’ll do my best to explain in the notes what can and can’t happen in psych. I probably don’t need to spell out that just as with “inappropriate use of the Force,” AU Ben Solo may not be the most ethical of shrinks (SHOCKER). The other characters mentioned may or may not have awareness of their former selves and may or may not have their own agendas in their present life. 

Clear as mud, right? Well, I want a bit of suspense in the story, since that’s my favorite thing to write and read! It’s a WIP for sure! 

No matter how it turns out, it’s fun to be writing again! 

Hope everyone had a great weekend! 

#the hypnotist #pandora_spocks #reylo #reylo fanfic #reincarnation au #kylo x rey #hidden agendas #karma #psychiatry #hypnotism #emdr

[thesummerfox]

for the recent ask game: 6, 10, 46, 119 please!

Thank you!

6. What kind of people are you attracted to?

Honestly? Troublemakers. People who are a riot and a half to hang out with, who can make me laugh and have big laughs of their own, who’ll start an adventure and pull me out of my comfort zones, who’re passionate about the things they do and are interested in, and who’ve got surprising insights and deep inner worlds to explore. I love people who march to the beat of their own drum in life and who can pull you in with them. Driven, slightly mad, live wires of energy, you name it.. it’s all good. (I’ve been told I’m also often attracted to clean-cut men, haha, and I’m pretty sure with women I’m attracted to a certain type as well.. but to me that always comes second to someone’s personality.)

10. Who was the last person you had a deep conversation with?

Probably @fowit because she rocks like that.

46. What are you paranoid about?

That people don’t like me as much as they say they do, talk bad shit about me behind my back, and only pretend to be interested in what I have to say.

119. Favourite book?

*wails* You’re asking me to choose my favourite child! So, naturally, I have a short ist of faves that you can’t ask me to choose between and that is always woefully incomplete because I have so many favourites that it’d be impossible to keep naming them all..

Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina

Frank Herbert – Children of Dune

Juliet Marillier – Son of the Shadows

Chris Wooding – The Braided Path trilogy

Danielle LaPorte – The Fire-Starter Sessions

Maya Deren – The Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti

Tahereh Mafi – Furthermore

Angie Thomas – The Hate U Give

Evan Wright – Generation Kill

Sebastian Junger – War

Michelle Alexander – The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in theAge of Colorblindness

Madeleine L'Engle – A Wrinkle In Time

Madeline Miller – The Song of Achilles

Roald Dahl – Matilda

Gillian Flynn – Gone Girl

Neil Gaiman – American Gods

Clarissa Pinkola Estés – Women Who Run With The Wolves

Alan Moore – Watchmen

Anne Rice – The Witching Hour

Mary Gentle – Ash: A Secret History

C.S. Lewis – The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Mark Z. Danielewski – House of Leaves

Brian Jacques – Redwall

K.A. Applegate – Animorphs series

Carrie Ryan – The Forest of Hands and Teeth

Justin Cronin – The Passage

Garth Nix – Abhorsen series

Michael Gruber – Tropic of Night

Susan Cain – Quiet

Philip Shenon – A Cruel and Shocking Act

Jacqueline Carey – the Kushiel saga

Charles de Lint – Moonheart

Robert Kolker – Lost Girls

Helen Rappaport – Four Sisters

Simon Schama – Citizens

LIFE - The Day Kennedy Died: Fifty Years Later

Katherine S. Newman and others – Rampage: The Social Roots ofSchool Shootings

Kassia St Clair – The Secret Lives of Colour

James W. Loewen – Sundown Towns

Stephen Kennedy Smith – JFK

Tad Williams – Otherland

Ruth Scurr – Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution

Daniel Hecht – City of Masks

Terry Hayes – I Am Pilgrim

Robert Liparulo – Comes A Horseman

William Makepeace Thackeray – Vanity Fair

John Steinbeck – Travels With Charley: In Search of America

J.K. Rowling – Harry Potter series

Orlando Figes – A People’s Tragedy

Jared Diamond – Guns, Germs, and Steel

Jon Krakauer – Under The Banner of Heaven

Paulo Coelho – By The River Piedra I Sat Down And Wept

Gabriel King – The Wild Road

Starhawk & Hillary Valentine – The Twelve Wild Swans

Lars Kepler – The Hypnotist

Sarah Waters – Fingersmith

Mara Leveritt – Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West MemphisThree

Monica Furlong – Wise Child

Raymond E. Feist – The Serpentwar Saga

Terry Pratchett – Going Postal

Ann L. Bucholtz – Death Investigation: An Introduction to ForensicPathology for the Nonscientist

Emma Donoghue – Room

#Anonymous

[forest-of-stories]

There are plenty of moments in the Hypnotists trilogy that live rent free in my head. Most of those moments involve the series villain. This one does not:

AIN’T NO PARTY LIKE A HYPNO TRASH PARTY

#hypnotists trilogy

[venusdear]

Felicity: What did you guys get in your yearbook? Kira: 'Prettiest Smile' Tommy: 'Nicest Personality' Wilson: 'Most likely to start a bar fight' Jax: 'Least likely to start a bar fight, but most likely to win one'

#source: ??? #incorrect quotes #the hypnotists trilogy #the hypnotists gordon korman #the hypnotists #felicity green #kira kendell #tommy cicerelli #wilson devries #jax opus #jax is so op #JAX4WINNINGABARFIGHT

[whileiamdying]

Europa: Night Train

Seduction by locomotive. Gliding on silvery reels of steel, tricked out with Lars von Trier’s stated panoply of “front and back projections, double exposure, and clearly choreographed camera movements to break down the realistic frame,” Europa ravishes with its elaborately storyboarded tunnel vision. Herr Director is the soul of discretion and modesty: “Of course I borrow, for a moment, Hitchcock’s camera and place it in a landscape by Tarkovsky, but something happens in that process.” What’s unique about this hyperderivative movie is how fluidly it melds the postmodern with the old-fashioned, so the anachronistic and satirical elements don’t cancel each other out but mysteriously enhance the suspension of disbelief. The alchemy of highly metabolized artifice and absurdist chic in this international 1991 production fabricates a playful architecture of doom from cinema and pop culture’s baggage compartment: a trans-Europa express that has the homespun warmth of Kraftwerk, the pious ethics of Dr. Mabuse, the meek introversion of  Diva, the down-to-earth attitude of Vertigo, and the courtly manners of Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger.”

The words—make that deep cushiony-leather tones—of the film’s narrator-analyst-hypnotist suck us in, an enticing murmur beckoning us back, back, into a past that never was. In Europa (or Zentropa, as it was known in American release) but not of it, we’re again children in a bedtime-story world, listening to clarion notes ringing like a broken alarm clock. Asleep or awake? Can’t tell. Either way, something bad is going to happen. Something exciting, too, a consummation devoutly wished, or dreamt. Christmas morn, Germany, 1945: everything in the mind’s eye glistens, even the ruins—especially the ruins. Goose bumps are on the march as we tingle with an eight-year-old’s delicious anticipation of receiving his first model train set from a wicked stepmother in a gossamer negligee. Europa infantilizes as it seduces, dispensing the irrational in smartly streamlined doses, using sophistication as an overpowering tool for reducing the moviegoer to virginal putty in the director’s hands.

When von Trier made Europa, he was still very much an unknown quantity—a wunderkind without portfolio. The Element of Crime (1984) was a knockout first feature, a heavily calculated calling-card film: the Danish director made it in English, and utilized a stylized sepia look and mock-noir tone that in retrospect seem to anticipate much of the mental landscape of the graphic novel. He then made Epidemic (1987), a more “private” film no less adroit at juggling wholly incongruous elements (Dreyer, Wagner, horror show, self-referential in-jokes): your garden variety Scandinavian art film that mutates into Army of Darkness. What links the three “E” films is the puckish consciousness of their own cinematic apparatus, a sensual morbidity, and that stubborn, irrepressible hypnotism fetish.

From the start, attaching the tacky “von” to his name like a forged royal crest, the director set out to establish himself as a chameleon with no commitment to any particular style or aesthetic except that of self-reinvention. In this he resembled David Bowie more than any cinematic figure: performing the role of auteur to the droll, fiendish hilt, directing with the histrionic pantomime conviction of someone lip-synching “The Man Who Sold the World.” Europa wrapped up the very loosely constituted end-of-European-civilization trilogy (the coroner’s report indicating either suicide or “death by misadventure”), and it marked his last thorough engagement with cinema as entertainment (even if as a baroque agent provocateur). But with Breaking the Waves (1996), he found his true cruel vocation in a glamorized Bergman-Dreyer synthesis of female martyrdom and devoutly heretical melodrama. Notwithstanding the “vow of chastity” feint of his pseudoexperimental The Idiots, he has secured his everlasting niche in film history as the master of high-profile abasement. What can an unbeliever say in the supremely confident, upside-down smiley face of Dancer in the Dark or Dogville (the very title mocking his Dogme manifesto) or Mandingo (oops, I meant Manderlay) save to note that when poor Britney Spears shaved her head in public, she was either paying him fruitcake homage or auditioning for a starring role: Toto, I don’t think we’re in Europa anymore.

Indeed, Europa’s back-projected German wasteland is a more self-conscious—cryptically perverse—variant on the pluperfect trance state perfected by movies like The Wizard of Oz, not to mention Casablanca and Notorious. A completely self-contained universe of seamlessly gratifying myth, eternity at 24 frames per second, it dissolves rationality the way a smokestack melts snow. It calls out from the blackest endless night, where Strangers on a Train is fated to intersect with Wings of Desire. (Only, angels don’t have wings here, Nazis do.) Rainy, bombed-out black-and-white images suddenly hemorrhage color, filling the screen or maybe leaking just enough inky tint to draw our eyes to some small, strategic part of the frame—a bullet on the floor, a train’s emergency brake. The widescreen image has seldom seemed more claustrophobic and imprisoning, a cluttered death row of unsuspecting offenders where orderly rituals, bureaucratic niceties, and institutional rule books are thrown out the window, but to no avail: the stay of mass execution never arrives.

Pellucid, luscious, and overloaded, this celluloid siren song could be Bowie’s “Heroes” arranged by Bernard Herrmann: a male Dorothy smuggled into the sinister post–World War II Oz of The Third Man,which in turn has taken on a touch of the enchanted, decomposing air of Eraserhead. (Von Trier, ever the hustler iconoclast, professed to detest Eraserhead and dislike Citizen Kane but had no compunction about using them for his own ends, salvaging devices from those pictures like a misanthropic scrap dealer.) Leopold Kessler (Jean-Marc Barr’s naïf hero, the open-faced image of noxious innocence) is thrown to the Werewolves—dead-end Nazi partisans who refuse to concede defeat, and conduct a campaign of terror, sabotage, and graffiti against the American occupation—as well as industrialist Max Hartmann’s ravenous family.

Hartmann is the soon-to-be-late proprietor of the Zentropa railway line, which idealistic young American émigré Kessler has come to work for as an apprentice sleeping-car conductor. (The term “sleeping-car conductor” alone is charged with enough symbolic significance to sink a more earnest film.) Hartmann’s icy-hot femme fatale daughter Kat (Barbara Sukowa) has ties to the Werewolves herself. A noir perfume advertisement with velvet claws, capped teeth, and luxuriant lupine hairdo, Sukowa isn’t playing a character but a pose of war-weary glamour wrapped in a veil of desperation and mottled danger, channeling Hanna Schygulla channeling Marlene Dietrich—overmatched, inexperienced Kessler has no chance against her wiles. (The prim stiffness of her German-English accent is a disarming quirk, humanizing her scary beauty.) For von Trier, “the past and the image of an actor mean a great deal,” so associations are piled up in tottering wedding-cake layers: Udo Kier not only stands in for Peter Lorre, he brings with him a bread-crumb trail of Fassbinder and Warhol (well, Paul Morrissey) connections.

Approximating and even improving on the omniscient tone of latter-day Orson Welles, guiding us through the convoluted action and plucking the psyche’s strings, there is Bergman’s old knight-errant/magician/alter ego Max von Sydow. Alphaville’s Eddie Constantine, face cratered with age and hard living, plays an American colonel/fixer who is so soft-spoken, considerate, and vacuously fair-minded (“You meet so many sensible Germans these days”) he lulls everyone into underestimating him. Ernst-Hugo Järegård does what amounts to a monstrous revision of Casablanca’s S. Z. “Cuddles” Sakall as Kessler’s imperious uncle, who is his supervisor on the train, the classic fussbudget turned into a seedy, officious, domineering troll—a brusque, impossible figure out of Kafka, aptly enough since von Trier meant this movie as Amerika in reverse, the wide-eyed young man attempting to make a fresh start amid the bankrupt rubble and incomprehensible oaths (to him, anyway) of the Old World.

Also on board is cinematographer Henning Bendtsen, who had worked with the incomparable Carl Theodor Dreyer, von Trier’s favorite director (prized for his “honesty”; what that word could possibly mean in this house of games, as far from Gertrud as it is possible to imagine, is anybody’s guess). Von Trier hired people not only to execute what he called Europa’s “cartoonlike aesthetic” but to actively resist it as well: “Henning really works against my ideas. It’s the same with some of the actors: I like to have them work against my films because that’s when some interesting things start to happen.” Bendtsen lends the film a spirit of gravitas that counterbalances von Trier’s zippier pop conceptions (Barr racing against the backdrop of a clock, a billboard-sized projection of Sukowa’s face looming over him like a Lichtenstein painting, the tiny boy assassin who shoots a newly appointed Jewish mayor and faces off against the grainy, back-projected image of outsize soldiers). The cinematography refuses to make everything too shiny and hard, forging a tension that gives this dizzying, sometimes maddening film the peculiar equilibrium of a recurring nightmare.

Diagram this supremely excessive movie on a blackboard, and you’d have so many overlapping lines of attack, equations, and breathless opposing plot points it would look like a pack rat’s nest. The screenplay ran to 600 minutely detailed pages, with 200 pages of storyboards. Or maybe it was 1,000 pages altogether: like the “big one” in a fisherman’s yarn, it grew with each recounting. No wonder Europa’s catchall web of allusions, artistic cannibalism, and widespread déjà vu can induce a certain motion sickness, or possibly emotion-deficit syndrome. (Maybe it should come with a box of Dramamine, though come to think of it, that’s what von Sydow’s voice is for: relax, as ’tis written in the Liverpool Book of the Dead, and float downstream.)

Some people are seduced, others feel molested—as if the sanctity of the film medium itself had been violated, or one of its priests had violated them. The suspicion cannot be escaped that von Trier is up to no good with his wizardly trick shots and corkscrew dollies and willingness to play the good old Euro-anguish, last-train-from-Auschwitz blues for black laughter. J. Hoberman approvingly thought this brazen effort to revive “the primitive magic of popular cinema” aspired to Fassbinder’s “flashy hubris.” It’s not laughing at the victims of history but the marks, the suckers, the idealists, the lofty Wagnerians, the sectarian rationalists—the good volk who vant to believe in some Supreme Abstraction at any cost. Which makes Europa a gloss, inadvertent or not, on the gnarled, epochal, transcendentalist mausoleums (crematoriums?) such as Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s Hitler: A Film from Germany and Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma: in the analyst-dictator attitude struck by von Sydow, Freud and Hitler, the twin poles of the twentieth-century mental landscape, at last meet. Below the subconscious mind, anticonsciousness: the death instinct rising up out of all that philosophy and poetry and romantic violin music in Europa’s mini Götterdämmerung—a slapstick Götterdämmerung at that.

David Thomson wrote in the 1994 edition of A Biographical Dictionary of Film (on the basis of this and the earlier Element of Crime) that von Trier was “brilliant in a way that gives the term a bad name. He knows no reality—only film. His movies only refer back to the accumulated culture of all those split seconds.” Couldn’t you say as much about Godard and Eisenstein and half the great movie-mad directors? (Ideology isn’t a higher form of the real, it’s the opiate of the intellectuals.) Thomson claimed von Trier’s hollow-point aesthetic “may have more to do with personal and private dysfunction” than anything else, but if this is a sickness, it’s just a slightly more advanced stage of the then emergent Movie Brat epidemic that included the Coen brothers (Barton Fink could be avant Hollywood’s answer film to Europa: insufferable nebbish lead, pinball formalization, Faulkner-Odets potshots, stereotype-mongering, and a classic hallway rampage), Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, P. T. Anderson, and countless Asian auteurs past and present. Pop metaphysicians who push the malpractice envelope with every project, they’ve cultivated a raffish, raked-over milieu that indiscriminately scrounges off art films the way art films once borrowed from B movies and pulp.

Europa triumphs as the last beautiful, untrustworthy gasp of film noir and the first salvo of a postmod metathriller genre that never quite got around to materializing (a clueless Kessler of a film such as Soderbergh’s The Good German exists only to make von Trier’s opus look that much better). Europa deploys the trappings of grandiosity and genius in order to trap us—to make us surrender our better judgment and give in to the cheapest ploys in the book. Then it lets us know that, just like the deserving-exactly-what-he-gets sleeping-car conductor, we’ve been had seven ways from Sunday. What makes this Welles/Ed Wood mock-up such an ebullient ride right to the bottom of the river lies in how persuasive a simulation it is of a (if not the) greatest-movie-ever-made, and in the weirdly complementary sense that this whole enterprise is just one over-the-top slip away from unraveling into a finely wrought Plan 9 from Occupied Europe.

Howard Hampton is the author of Born In Flames: Termite Dreams, Dialectical Fairy Tales, and Pop Apocalypses.

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#the criterion collection #criterion #europa #lars von trier #howard hampton #germany

[the-literata-letters]

watch list - thriller tv series

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS MY OTHER WATCH LISTS.

✵ ACTIVELY UPDATING ✵

☐  Tell Me Your Secrets (2021–) ☐  The Passage (2019–) ☐  怒江之战: Battle of Nu Jiang (2019) ☐  暗黑者: Death Notice: The Darker trilogy ☐  催眠大师: The Great Hypnotist (2014)

#watch list #what to watch #tv series #thriller #give me recommendations

[ao3feed4reylo]

via AO3 works tagged 'Star Wars - All Media Types' read it on AO3 at http://bit.ly/2XRm2b3 SuperPsychoNutcase

by SuperPsychoNutcase

Rey has lived a hard life that has left her with trust issues. When new coworker and, dare she say, friend, Rose Tico, suggests she go to a hypnotist, Rey hesitantly agrees. It's damn time she conquered her fears.

Words: 2079, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: F/M

Characters: Rey (Star Wars), Kylo Ren, Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rose Tico

Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey

Additional Tags: Guarded Rey, Hypnotist Kylo Ren, Rose just wants to be Rey's friend, Rose wants to help, Possessive Kylo Ren, stalker Kylo Ren, Obsessed Kylo Ren, Rey needs love, mental manipulation, Trigger words, Maybe a little bit of NonCon, not sure yet - Freeform, Making This Up As I Go

read it on AO3 at http://bit.ly/2XRm2b3

#IFTTT #AO3 works tagged 'Star Wars - All Media Types' Rey/Ben Solo #Reylo #Kylo Ren/Rey #TheLastJedi

[itunesbooks]

Heart Burn - C.J. Archer

Heart Burn Book 3 of the 1st Freak House Trilogy C.J. Archer Genre: Historical Price: $4.99 Publish Date: December 4, 2013 Publisher: C.J. Archer Seller: Carolyn Comito Time is running out for Hannah. With her life hanging by a thread and Tate trying to kidnap her, she finds help in an unusual quarter - the man who put the narcoleptic memory block on her as a child. Yet the powerful hypnotist may not be all that he seems. It's difficult to trust a man who regularly hypnotizes his wife against her wishes, and who is much too interested in Jack's unnatural abilities. With so much at stake, the last thing Hannah and Jack need is to be apart. Yet they cannot touch each other if they want to stay alive.  This thrilling conclusion to the 1st Freak House Trilogy will take you on an emotional roller coaster with twists, turns, highs and lows that will leave you gasping for breath. A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The 1st Freak House Trilogy has been a real blast to write, and I hope you enjoy this conclusion to the series. The next trilogy gives Samuel Gladstone a starring role and pairs him with a woman with a dark past she would rather forget. I hope you'll consider picking up THE MEMORY KEEPER and rejoining some of your favorite characters from the first series and meeting new ones too. ~CJ http://bit.ly/2LtDVuJ

#Historical

[tsarkoshei]

I've only watched Oldboy & The Handmaiden! Which of Park Chan Wook's films would you also recommend?

Omg I’ve been waiting for so long for someone to ask me this!!!

Stoker (2013) - Park Chan Wook’s American debut film and you’ve probably seen countless of gifsets on Tumblr. It’s definitely a film to start off if you’re getting introduced to his filmography because it’s not as intense as his Korean films and he toned it down by a lot in terms of fucked up shit but still definitely worth watching because it’s beautiful. Also, Mia Wasikowska is fantastic in this.

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005) - Oldboy is actually in a trilogy called the Vengeance trilogy, which composes of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003) and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005). The storylines aren’t related in any way except for the themes of revenge, violence and redemption. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is stunning, less violent than Oldboy but psychologically more interesting. Choi Min Sik, the actor who plays Oh Dae Su in Oldboy, is also in this film, as well as several other minor actors (the hypnotist, the bodyguard, the private prison owner from Oldboy are all in this film). Also, the main character is amazing tbh. Fucked up but probably not as Oldboy fucked up.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) - The first in the Vengeance trilogy. I haven’t watched this in a long while so I’m a little short on the details but I remember it being really amazing and stunned me. Also, has Doona Bae from Sense8 as one of the prominent characters!!! Also stars Song Kangho, who’s honestly one of the best Korean actors out there + another recurring main actor in PCW’s films. 

J.S.A: Joint Security Area (2000) - The first big film that got Park Chan Wook famous in the Korean cinema industry. It’s definitely not fucked up and instead, it’s more sad, exploring the tensions between South and North Korea. It’s a lot more subtle and deals more with emotions than anything. Also a story about friendship lol. Stars Song Kang Ho and the main character from Lady Vengeance, Lee Young Ae. Also, Lee Byung Hun, who’s a seriously prominent actor in the Korean cinema industry, so definitely worth a watch for the actors as well. 

Thirst (2009) - (!!!!!) I’m reluctant to put this on here because people either love it or dislike it. This is probably Park Chan Wook’s most fucked up, kinkiest film ever but I LOVED it SO much. From start to finish, it was an incredible experience and I was really crazy about this film for a long while after watching it. It’s about vampires! Religion! Blood! Morality! Sinning! It’ll make you uncomfortable and shocked. It’s got religion, blood, sex all mixed into one film. It’s a little longer than his other films as well (although the Handmaiden was longer by around 10 minutes). I think it’s definitely worth a watch but I’m incredibly biased lmao. Also stars Song Kang Ho as the main character and he does a FANTASTIC job in this film.

I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK (2006) - Park Chan Wook’s lesser known film but I haven’t watched it yet so I can’t really sell it to you. I do know that it’s not entirely dark and intense, as it’s a romance, drama and comedy film. It’s received pretty positive reviews but it definitely didn’t gain as much attention and sales as J.S.A, Oldboy and Lady Vengeance. 

That’s the majority of his directed films. He doesn’t have a lot of films unfortunately since he just really started kicking off his directing around the 2000s. Sorry, I rambled on for a bit but I honestly want to see lesser known PCW films on Tumblr and I’d be happy to help out by recommending his films. Hope you have fun watching them.

#im biased sorry #park chanwook #my main dude my film dad #if you want other korean film recs feel free to ask #goldfinchex