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#i want those iconic crows lines on screen
kissagii · 1 year
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an infodump on s&b (for @sleeping-snapdragons)
this series is very very important to me and even though there's a lot of discourse regarding the (sometimes questionable) decisions by the showrunners i'm obsessed with literally every aspect of it
cause when i discovered the first trilogy i was like a whole different person. the person who read those books was a 6th grade girl that was lost in the world and about to fall in love with a craft that would follow her through so many developments in his life. tamar was my favorite character - i was in love with this walking armory an unhealthy amount and seriously thought i just "really liked her as a character." but that was really just the bisexuality stirring, then having tamar be canonically queer was probably the most important thing for me at the time because it broke me out of my naive worldview and showed me that queerness was, well, real. it feels so weird to be a trans man simping for a canonically lesbian character but seeing her on screen, with her axes and eyeliner and fiery attitude, how could i not? the part of me that loved her then still loves her now and the actress absolutely slayed the role (just look at the gifsets omg)
and then there's six of crows, which freshman-year ness latched onto so desperately because it was queer representation and it was good and being able to see two characters be happy together was a sort of thing i hungered for. and now they're on screen, walking and talking and moving, helping each other through the internal conflicts they're both simultaneously facing, and even though their relationship was rushed i think it makes so much room for the development that's to come. and of course the actors are literally amazing and i really don't get why people are hating on them because every little change they made was perfect. and not to mention jespers outfits omg he's my role model with that stupid brown yellow and purple tattersall suit with orange socks and a fucking kilt.
oh and then there's nikolai, who i properly hated until like a year ago, he's insufferable and scheming and stupid and charming and really fucking beautiful. he's a dreamer and an inventor and he's so annoying i'd kiss him to shut him up and i'm gonna put one of his quotes as my phone background because he has so many good ones
and there's david who's just so me-coded because he's a nerd that's horrible with human interaction and has all these funky mannerisms that i also have (like holding up one finger when you want to make a point but don't want to interrupt) and he said so many of the iconic lines that melted my heart in the books and he should be the role model of what men should be and his ending is so unfair to me and all the other fans because how could they do that to us
basically this show is everything past me could have ever wanted and it's everything current me wants and i'm so not okay
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six-of-aros · 1 year
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OK
I have just finished watching shadow and bone season two and I have many thoughts, but non of my friends have read the books, just watched the show so I can’t really talk about it with them so here we go. With that said, major shadow and bone spoilers below. Proceed with caution. 
First of all, I accept that the books and the show are two different things, however, some of the book plots just made more sense and also I think it’s weird that the show just takes whatever part of the books they want which messes up the crows whole storyline. 
Alina is alive and not fake dead?? How are they planning on spinning that? And also I was really looking forward to the white hair Alina look because I feel like that was going to be really cool but they just.... skipped that? Also why did she and Mal split up? That made no sense to me. I feel like Alina should have followed Mal, because he’s spent his whole life following her and now it’s her turn. 
David??? My boy??? I’m not supposed to be sad about him now, I’m supposed to be sad later! That part really messed me up. 
One part I loved was seeing Inej and Jesper and Nina all meet for the first time, it was lovely to see the start of that friendship. But Nina and Zoya had basically no reaction to seeing each other? They just kinda, cut to them being in the same room and had a few comments that hinted to a backstory but that was it? 
I liked the Wylan and Jesper backstory better in the books, but I loved their interactions and story on the screen as well. I’m still mourning the loss of the “Just girls?” “Not just girls,” line, which sucks. 
Speaking of missing lines, how about Genya’s iconic “I’m am not ruined, I am ruination,” ? I’m glad she stood up to the queen, but why was the king just dead? 
I absolutely loved Tolya, anytime he brought up poetry I couldn’t help but smile. I’m glad he and Kaz had a poetry moment at the end. 
Also, the whole story in the Shu Han was so cool! I loved seeing countries other than Ravka and Kerch, and anytime a saint popped up in the story I happily grabbed my copy of the lives of saints and felt more connected to the show. 
I love Zoya in this season, I just love Zoya in general but it was easier to justify it to those who haven’t seen her full character with the way she acted during this season. I loved seeing her and Inej team up to take down the nichevo’ya. 
Kaz and Inej make my heart hurt. That’s all .
In terms of Nikolai, I can honestly say I have no complaints. I know his story differed from how it was in the books, but it felt better somehow, having him present throughout the whole battle and having to discover and fight his demon on his own after everything. I don’t know how he’s going to do that with Alina around, but we’ll see how that goes. 
Now for the kicker, the ending. I didn’t like the ending. The ending in the books is so much more poetical, despite Alina’s good intentions, she let her hunger for power get the better of her and she lost it all. She sacrificed everything for her country. Fought, bled, and killed for it, and it still took everything from her. In return, however, her power was given to others so they can continue on her legacy and relieve her of her great burden to destroy the fold. I probably didn’t explain it all that well, but I think it was much better in the books. 
When I tell you I jumped out of my seat and paced around the room for a good five minutes because I saw the bee on Zoya’s shoulder, I mean I fully jumped out of my seat and paced. I might have screamed a little bit as well. 
I’m exciting for the whole Jurda Parem storyline, although I’m not quite sure how they’re going to pull it off with the patchy mess they left of the crooked kingdom book after taking only what they want and scrapping the rest. 
I’m glad they made it Siege and Rising rather than have a whole other season for the third book, I think that worked well and while it felt a little rushed at times it fit the story. 
I loved the show, loved the books, and can’t wait to see what Netflix comes out with next. 
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indianariesolive · 2 years
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Things I desperately need for S2 of Shadow & Bone Netflix show
* The Crows working together as a team (all 6 of them) 🤤🤩
*More Malina scenes 🧡🤌
*More screen time for Zoya (I want all the badass moments)
* The Darkling aka General Kirigan being more cruel & ruthless & intimidating as a proper villain should be (Fr stop humanizing & romanticizing him 😤✋)
* Kaz whacking the Darkling with his cane (its not a want, it's a need 🙏)
* Kaz's backstory (hopefully 🤞)
* Angsty and cute Helnik moments ❤( even better if they stick closer to those that were in the books with some improv here and there{I want more Helnik I'm so crazy for them})
* Matthias fighting wolves in Hellgate
(& the whole prison break{More of Matthias period. 😌✋})
*Alina & Nikolai's friendship 🥺💕
*Matthias calling Kaz 'demjin' (also hopefully him calling Nina 'little red bird') 🤩
*Baghra pulling the strings behind the scenes (I need her to be a genuine pain in the Darkling's ass)
*Jesper & Milo reunion 🫂 🐐 💕
*Jesper & Wylan bonding over cuddling Milo maybe 😗👉👈
*Wylan being underestimated by others at first & then him shocking their pants off with his intelligence and bomb making skills.
*Wylan & David interaction (even better if its with something science related)
*Alina being more badass & standing up for herself. 💪
*CREEPY 👏MEGALOMANIAC👏 VILLAIN 👏DARKLING 👏WITH👏NONE👏OF👏THAT👏EMO👏PRINCE👏CHARMING👏SH!T👏. He's the villain so let him be bad (despicable bad not cool bad).
*Mal being Alina's no.1 hype man along with Tolya & Tamar. 🥰
*Sturmhond's shocking identity reveal & Alina punching him on the face 🤭
*More of Inej's backstory (portray Tante Heleen's cruelty)
*Also Jesper's backstory if possible 😬🤞 (ik I'm demanding too much)
*SOME 👏TIDEMAKER👏REPRESENTATION👏PLEASE
*Nikolai's iconic 'Improbable not Impossible' line 🤌
*More fight scenes involving Matthias 💙🤌(Just wanna see him punch somebody's face. Think of all the cool & savage edits one could make out of them 😌)
* More Fedyor × Ivan
*More screen time for Genya × David. Also please highlight Genya & Alina's friendship, like what happens next.
*Jesper referring to Wylan as 'merchling' / 'Our demo man'. 🥰
*Also some scenes of Jarl Brum being a bigoted douche if possible. He's such an underrated villain he needs more hate. Needs to be more infamous among the fandom. 😌🗡
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franniebanana · 3 years
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CQL Rewatch - Ep 20
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Iconic. Seeing Wei Wuxian back and better than ever is so satisfying! That flute playing that probably we’ve all forgotten about since the first two episodes becomes a repeating leitmotif throughout the series. It’s just as iconic as Wei Wuxian himself. And what I love about this shot here is how the light hits his eyes, and from this specific camera angle, it looks like a mask on his face! I just thought that was super cool. Whether it was intentional or not, I have no idea, but I like to think it was. I guess it’s like a reverse mask in this case—everything is hidden except his eyes.
It’s amazing how I only went without Wei Wuxian for like half an episode, yet it felt like so much longer. The emotional weight that he carries is so great that from all the characters searching for him, it feels like it’s actually been three months, instead of more like twenty-five minutes. And I think that’s something that we can feel in CQL but we can’t really feel in the book. Since the book is written in third person limited, we only see Wei Wuxian’s side of the story (I think that’s accurate, but it’s been a few months since I read it). That being the case, we never leave Wei Wuxian’s side, we never get to miss him being there. Of course the story is framed totally differently in the book and not in chronological order, even—lots of flip-flopping, which is fun but also a little confusing when you’re trying to keep track of a timeline.
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I think part of what makes Wang Lingjao so creepy here is that her garish makeup is totally gone: her face is pale and ghoulish, with just the bright red blood trickling out of her nose, mouth, and cut on her cheek. I think they could have made her even more ghostly, but I like what they did for her apparition. It’s fun to see how fast Wen Chao cracks, though. He’s very much all bark and no bite—honestly, such a coward. On the one hand, it’s satisfying to watch him lose it, but on the other, it’s quite disturbing. I toe the line between enjoying it and being disgusted by it, but I love that CQL at least kept in this part of Wei Wuxian’s character. It’s like revenge, no matter how bloody, is okay in Chinese tv, but not the main character being kind of bad. I don’t get why they had to nerf his character to the point of absolving him of all guilt with everything that happened. I like a character who makes bad choices, but feels guilty for it, because that shows depth. Someone who bad things happen to because of the “real villain” aren’t as interesting to me. I think also that Xiao Zhan would have been amazing as the real Wei Wuxian from the book, had they adapted him that way. I also would have really, really loved to see the scene that is only really described to us (I think by Lan Xichen) where a distraught and delusional Wei Wuxian rejects Lan Wangji. Ugh, that would have been so heart-wrenching! Maybe in the donghua…sigh….
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So this is important, I think. There was a point in the last episode where Jin Zixuan tells his cousin not to let the crows peck at the dead bodies of their enemies. In other words, don’t desecrate the bodies, even if they are the enemy. Of course, Jin Zixuan didn’t hold any personal grudges towards any of them, at least that we know of. Jiang Cheng certainly does. So even though Wang Lingjao is already dead by her own hand, he whips her with Zidian. Jiang Cheng is becoming more and more twisted by his anger and grief, which he never deals with in a healthy way. He wants revenge against those that have wronged him and his parents, and he really never stops seeking revenge throughout the story. First it’s against the Wens, and then it’s against Wei Wuxian. It’s a fairly slow descent, I think, over years, but I quite like watching him twist like this. While it’s fun and interesting watching someone repent and have a redemption arc, it’s also interesting watching them go the other way.
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Lan Wangji seems to know, or at least suspect, that the person who has killed everyone in the Supervisory Office, including Wang Lingjao, is Wei Wuxian. A talent for using talismans (one of which Lan Wangji used himself to escape the Wens), someone who is seeking revenge against the Wen Clan—these things point to Wei Wuxian in his mind. He doesn’t want to say this to Jiang Cheng, he doesn’t even want to admit it himself, but he’s putting the pieces together. I think this is a frightening thought for him. On the one hand, he would be happy to find Wei Wuxian alive, but on the other, what state would they find him in? And what does it mean that he’s killed all these people singlehandedly? This isn’t the Wei Wuxian that Lan Wangji knows and cares so deeply about. This isn’t the man that Lan Wangji was ready to die for. I think his heart is very much filled with dread in this scene.
Jiang Cheng’s line is interesting too—basically, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Solid, really, but it does come with some problems in reality. The enemy of your enemy just might stab you in the back later. It’s a very simplistic view, but I think at this point, Jiang Cheng is just happy to see the Wens dead. There are a few he wants to kill himself, but he seems satisfied if they just die out, regardless of who does it.
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I like seeing Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng team up for these few episodes, because it’s fun seeing how they each approach the situations. Jiang Cheng relies heavily on his heart and emotions, which I can totally identify with. He wants to find Wei Wuxian and he wants revenge on Wen Zhuliu and Wen Chao—those are his two priorities. And then Lan Wangji is definitely more of a logical person—he wants to get to the bottom of these deaths and find out who is the person with so much wicked energy that is doing all of it—and also, that person is probably Wei Wuxian, who he is very interested in finding. Here Jiang Cheng wants to rush after Wen Zhuiliu, just as he did when he went back to Lotus Pier. He’s very rash, while Lan Wangji is much more calm and collected. I mean, if it were me, I’d want to see if they would give up any information before I killed them.
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And the reveal is…Wen Chao is fucking disgusting! I didn’t even want to screencap one of the close-ups, because I felt like I’d have to do a trigger warning for blood lol. Not really, though, because I never do, sorry. I love the looks on Jiang Cheng’s and Lan Wangji’s faces, though. Jiang Cheng is so horrified and Lan Wangji is just mildly shocked. I think the real thing is like, who are we dealing with here? Who is this monster who’s been murdering everyone in all these different ways? Who has made Wen Chao look like this? Is this friend or foe? Like I said, Jiang Cheng keeps saying that as long as the person is killing the Wens, he’s fine with it, but I think even he is bothered by this level of mutilation, even against someone he loathes.
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It’s hilarious to me that Wen Zhuliu uses this tactic with Wen Chao. Oh, you’re going to insult me? I’m useless? Okay, bye! LOL. Also very amusing that this is really the last conversation they have with each other: this bickering that they’ve probably done over and over off screen. Wen Zhuliu stays by Wen Chao’s side, though, because he’s indebted to Wen Ruohan, of course. It would have been a neat twist to see Wen Zhuliu defect. And you still could have had a dramatic scene where Jiang Cheng chases him down.
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I love it! I love it I love it I love it! The flute! This part is so well done (it’s still a little campy, of course, but that’s part of the charm)! I mean, as the audience, we all know who it is by now, but I love that they keep up the mystery because Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng still don’t know. They didn’t see him walk in. I just love this.
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And shock. Jiang Cheng looks significantly more surprised. It had never crossed his mind that the person doing all this was actually Wei Wuxian, the very individual that he’s been searching for. Lan Wangji, on the other hand, doesn’t really look surprised. He looks a little surprised, okay—I’ll give you that. But I think most of what he’s feeling right now is the deep dread of being right. He wanted to be wrong, even when everything pointed to Wei Wuxian. I don’t think he wanted to believe that Wei Wuxian was capable of this, no matter how much he wanted to get revenge for what happened at Lotus Pier. I think there’s disappointment there too—how could he do such a thing? And I’ve giffed this scene with this quote: “He started to estrange her…And they became strangers who knew each other’s heart, so broken as they drifted apart” (Ana Claudia Antunes, Pierrot & Columbine). I think the realization here and a bit later for Lan Wangji that Wei Wuxian has become some other person is quite heartbreaking. He’s like a stranger to him, and that feeling of betrayal when you thought you knew a person inside and out—that hurts. It’s a deep-seated betrayal that Lan Wangji feels throughout this scene.
Oh, what I also like about this part is that when Wei Wuxian appears, neither one of them can look away. They are solely focused on him at this point.
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He finally gets his revenge on Wen Zhuliu. And it’s great. They jump through the roof and he strings him up with Zidian. I can’t really say anything about it—Jiang Cheng needed to do this or he never would have been able to move on from Lotus Pier and his parents’ death.
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WWX: Have I changed?
JC: No, not exactly.
I love that these lines are exchanged while the camera is on Lan Wangji. Lan Wangji already sees how Wei Wuxian has changed: the flute, the wicked energy, the almost senseless killing—none of these things are like the Wei Wuxian he’s come to love. And yes, I think love—and it hurts more because there is love. Lan Wangji wanted to walk the straight path with Wei Wuxian together, and he feels betrayed by what Wei Wuxian has done. Despite that, he still wants to help him. He implores Wei Wuxian to come back to Gusu with him so that they can help him and bring him back to the right path.
This whole scene feels like Lan Wangji isn’t even in the room, it’s like a private conversation between Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji just happens to overhear. He says nothing. He lets Jiang Cheng ask a hundred questions while Wei Wuxian calmly answers them. Wei Wuxian smiles and laughs, he seems himself, and yet he isn’t. There’s something wrong and Lan Wangji grows more and more perturbed by it as the seconds pass by.
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The tension in this scene is palpable. It’s painful, it’s sad, it’s really hard for me to watch. And yet, this is one of my favorite scenes. Lan Wangji is feeling a lot, and he’s held it all in until this moment here. He calls him Wei Ying, and then Wei Wuxian in turn addresses him first as Second Master Lan, and then as Hanguang-Jun, both very formal names. It’s not Lan Zhan anymore—there is no familiarity on Wei Wuxian’s part. I think part of that is his attempt to protect Lan Wangji from any association with him that might actually harm Lan Wangji and his reputation. He’s setting a boundary—a wall—between them. And then when Lan Wangji bites back, Wei Wuxian changes tack: he stars being informal with him again, he brings up how they were good friends, classmates, etc. But that’s not going to work because Lan Wangji is feeling pretty upset right now.
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Lan Wangji is desperate, scared, and worried for Wei Wuxian. Sometimes when we’re feeling all that, it can come across as anger, and that becomes worse when someone is dismissive of those feelings. Wei Wuxian is definitely dismissive here. In their interactions, Lan Wangji rarely shows this much emotion, and instead of paying attention to that, Wei Wuxian brushes it off. Jiang Cheng shows that he cares by hugging Wei Wuxian, but Lan Wangji is different—he’s thinking ahead, he’s seeing what Wei Wuxian has started to mess with—demonic cultivation—which can destroy a person’s mind, and he’s terrified. His only thought is to take Wei Wuxian away and try to change him for the better. Of course, just like what his father did to his mother, this cannot work. Even if Lan Wangji manages to force Wei Wuxian to come with him, he won’t be able to control him. All Lan Wangji can really do is try to persuade him.
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The intensity of Lan Wangji’s gaze here is something else. This is a man who is desperate to save the person he loves. He is really looking out for Wei Wuxian’s best interests here and is getting no support from Jiang Cheng. I don’t really know what’s going on in Jiang Cheng’s head right now, but he’s definitely finding Lan Wangji’s behavior offensive. He doesn’t understand that Wei Wuxian’s actions will lead to his ultimate destruction, while it is very clear to Lan Wangji. But all I can do here is bring up how they viewed the person who was killing all the Wens earlier, before they even knew who it was. Lan Wangji felt very unnerved by it: he was disturbed by the talismans and disturbed by the various manners of death, while Jiang Cheng’s stance always was that it didn’t matter because the person was clearly on the same side—a dead Wen is a dead Wen no matter who is behind it. And his opinion doesn’t change even after he finds out. It’s not important to him how Wei Wuxian was able to kill all those people. He asks the questions, but he isn’t interested in really hearing the answer. On the contrary, I think Lan Wangji is very interested in those answers, but he wants to hear about it in a controlled environment. He doesn’t want Wei Wuxian to go back to Yunmeng, where he will essentially live with free-rein without boundaries.
As for cinematography, I love how Wei Wuxian holds up his flute here, setting up a literal boundary between him and Lan Wangji. Not only do you have Jiang Cheng creating that wall with his sword, you also have Wei Wuxian. What I mean is, it’s not only Jiang Cheng who wants to keep Lan Wangji out. Wei Wuxian is drawing a line here too: he wants Lan Wangji to stay out of his business. And this morphs into, what happens at this place is not Gusu Lans’ business—it only concerns Yunmeng Jiang Sect.
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We all know Wei Wuxian is an arrogant person, but his arrogance and ignorance here is truly stunning. Lan Wangji tells him point-blank that he won’t be able to control this energy if he uses demonic cultivation, and Wei Wuxian does everything but laugh at him. I enjoy this and I hate it at the same time, because Lan Wangji is just fucking worried, you know? And maybe he doesn’t express himself well, but he’s shocked to see Wei Wuxian here, shocked that he’s responsible for all this—he can’t stay calm and collected under these conditions.
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In just a few minutes, Wei Wuxian says that he and Lan Wangji are good friends and that Lan Wangji should treat him better, as well as “Who do you think you are? What I do is none of your business.” I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the gist. This scene here, with their faces so close to each other, kills me. This is absolute betrayal for Lan Wangji. It’s as if everything they had built together—all the respect, the affection, the comradery—is gone. The Wei Wuxian that he knew is gone.
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I love the way this shot is framed, with Wei Wuxian staring after Lan Wangji, and then Wen Chao pleading, “Forgive me, forgive me.” So apt, because I think Wei Wuxian does feel bad here, I think he feels guilty. I think part of him really missed Lan Wangji and wanted to see him. I think he even knows that what Lan Wangji is doing is out of concern for him over anything else. But I also think Wei Wuxian’s pride gets in the way of that, and his desire for revenge, and even his desire for things to go back to normal. More than anything, Wei Wuxian wants to return to Yunmeng, to his shijie, to be able to live normally again, whatever that really means, because of course everything has changed. Nothing will ever be as it was again. More importantly, he has changed, and can never go back to the person he was before, the person who played so hard, the person who shirked his responsibilities and fooled around in classes, the person who shamelessly teased and flirted with Lan Wangji. That Wei Wuxian is gone. I think Wei Wuxian knows he’s hurt Lan Wangji and does feel bad about it, but he knows he has to push him away to protect him. He doesn’t want to drag Lan Wangji down with him, he feels it’s better this way. And I think, even though CQL!Wei Wuxian does have feelings for Lan Wangji quite a bit earlier than in the book, you can see the one-sided love here, in Lan Wangji’s aggressive behavior as he attempts to save this person he loves. Lan Wangji isn’t willing to give up on him, whereas Wei Wuxian is more prepared to let him go—to push him away to protect him. That’s love too, I suppose, but it’s a love that is meant to be from afar—a sad love, not a passionate one, not a desperate one, not the one that Lan Wangji feels for him.
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This is so heartbreaking for Lan Wangji, in part, because they had such a special relationship before. Prior to this, Wei Wuxian prided himself in that he and Lan Wangji went on night hunts together—the clan didn’t matter, whether that was unorthodox or not. And now to see him use his clan as a barrier between them…it’s quite a betrayal. Lan Wangji feels so hurt, so at a loss—he wonders what could he have done differently to prevent this, he blames himself.
This is one of my favorite episodes because of this reunion scene. What you expect is some great reunion, the hugging between Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian, maybe a smile from Lan Wangji because he’s really happy to see him. But instead, you get pain. You get a Jiang Cheng hugging Wei Wuxian, but Wei Wuxian not even returning the hug (he only raises his arm to signal that he wants to break apart). You get a heated confrontation between Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian, one that is “fondly” thought of as their break-up scene. I love the drama, I love the pain, I love the angst, I love the dichotomy between Yunmeng Jiang and Gusu Lan, I love that this is the start of more tension between Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji, I love everything about it. The “us and them” dynamic that starts here is so great, and then to see it slowly unravel throughout the next ten episodes, to see Wei Wuxian’s and Jiang Cheng’s relationship fall apart, while Wei Wuxian’s and Lan Wangji’s relationship begins to strengthen again--I eat it up. It’s like my candy. Anyway, I’m excited for what’s to come, excited to talk more wangxian and how it compares to the book (from my dwindling knowledge, that is)! Happy that you all are coming along this ride with me!
Other episodes: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
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Why Batwoman 2x01 was so good:
1. The writers managed to strike a great balance between paying respect to Kate Kane and introducing Ryan. Kate Kane as a character is, of course, significant to DC. She’s an important source of representation as a Jewish lesbian, and she has a large legacy/mythos within the larger DC Comics history. Batwoman first showed respect to Kate as a character by wisely chosing to not kill her off. Next, there’s one scene where Ryan is reading up on Kate, developing new understanding and respect in the process, and every few seconds the camera cuts over to where Mary and Luke are reading up on Ryan, similarly gaining understanding and respect for Ryan. I think this scene effectively facilitate the batsuit’s—as a mantle, as a symbol, and as a mythos—being passed on to Ryan. It paid a large amount of respect to Kate as a character, pointing out some of the most significant aspects of her character, and sort of drew Ryan into Kate’s mythos as Batwoman in a way that helps facilitate her becoming Batwoman - she comes to learn and respect the history and the gravity of Batwoman as a person, as an entity, as a figure of justice, and as an icon; and as a result, she can now carry on that legacy and expand it, using it to bring even more good to the world.
But even before she learned about Kate, Ryan respected her. When Ryan first met Mary and Luke, she offers genuine condolences for their loss. She doesn’t disrespect them or make light of their grief. Even though these two people are strangers,
In the process of paying due respect to Kate, however, Batwoman did not minimize Ryan or treat her as “second” to Kate. Ryan got a significant amount of screentime and focus—as she should—and her time on screen was all truly meaningful. We’ve begun to see her backstory, see who she is as a person, and see what that will mean for her as Batwoman.
2. Ryan is a lovable character, and Javicia did an excellent job portraying her. I love Ryan a lot, guys. She’s passionate, earnest, and driven. She’s down-to-earth and has a strong sense of justice that leads her through life. And at the same time, she’s a charming dork - the type of charming dork who yells “I’m bulletproof, bitches!” after dangling helplessly from the sky by a grappling hook. I, obviously, fucking love her for it.
I also think that the writers did a great job of keeping the vibe of season 1 to a good extent. The way Ryan was introduced felt like a proper introduction considering what we know about this show’s Gotham and considering how things were done in season 1. It worked well. Additionally, it is not lost on me how meaningful it is that from Ryan’s very first scene, we see that her instinct is to selflessly help victims to the best of her ability, and it is because she went out to help them that she stumbled upon the Batsuit. Furthermore, in that scene where she does discover the suit, the flashbacks establish that this moment in meaningful beyond just this one moment of time - it has connection to Ryan’s history and motivations for becoming Batwoman. During the DC Fandome this past summer, Caroline Dries said this season would deal with destiny. I think that that first scene was a great way to introduce it as a concept without taking away any of the sense that Ryan truly deserves this mantle as well. (One last side note - the use of music and sound effects in that first scene was excellent.)
While the writers certainly deserve a good bit of credit for creating this amazing character from scratch, I think Javicia also deserves a lot of credit here - she did an absolutely stunning job as Ryan. The charm I saw in Ryan was very similar to the goofy charm she brought to Ali in God Friended Me (which I loved, by the way), and those lighter scenes were played with the same adeptness as the dark, intense, and gutwrenchingly emotional scenes.
3. Batwoman acknowledged Alice’s grief and trauma in a way that also gave viewers some closure regarding season 1 matters. I think that Alice’s grief process was written pretty well considering her already existing trauma. And that succinct summary of Alice’s plan to get her dad to kill Kate was pretty clever on the writer’s part, as it gave us some closure regarding season 1’s goings on that were interrupted by COVID (and that were unable to be seen to completion since Kate Kane is no longer Batwoman).
4. The episode had many powerful moments. Some quotes that really struck me:
“You make it sound like these are all my choices...You wanna know why I haven’t paid my fines? Because I can’t find a job. Because I don’t have a home. Because no land lord wants to rent to an ex-con on post-release. You see how this works? No one cares that the dope wasn’t mine or that the Crows were dirty. Or that I’m actually a decent human. I am a file in your cabinet. That is not having power. That is thr very definition of powerless.” This line is made all the more powerful by the fact that Ryan’s first words upon donning the Batsuit are “Time to be powerful.”
“Trust me, I know I’m not a symbol, or a name, or a legacy...I am a number. I am the 327th baby of a Black woman who died of childbirth that year. I am a twenty-dollar-a-day check to a group home. I’m Inmate 4075 serving eighteen months for a crime I didn’t commit. But I can live with all those numbers because the mama who adopted me? I was her number one. But it turns out she’s just one of a quarter million murders in this country who have not seen justice. And that is a number I can’t live with.”
“I’m bulletproof, bitches!”
5. Batwoman has a truly excellent supporting cast. I know that a significant portion of the Batwoman fandom has been in love with Mary, Luke, and Alice since day one. One common fear within the fandom was that season 2 would feel like a completely different show, but at least in this episode, that wasn’t the case. The supporting characters were all prominently featured and given a good amount of emotional depth to cover - and seeing their journey helped the show feel familiar and helped carry us viewers over into this new era of Batwoman. And because the transition from Kate to Ryan was so well done, as I discussed in point 1, I didn’t feel like there was any absence or lacking in the show.
6. They did a great job carrying over that Kryptonite storyline from last season. In fact, it makes a lot more sense to me now. I was admittedly a bit confused by the whole Kryptonite storyline last season (it felt a bit like a mere device to facilitate Kate’s relationship with Kara - which, hey, I’m not complaining; I loved that friendship and think they should have hooked up once). Perhaps it was confusing since COVID cut it short. But whatever the reason, I’m glad that I now understand the deeper purpose behind this Kryptonite storyline. And, wow, this has the potential to be super cool and interesting!
7. They called out the Crows in a meaningful way. I think I’m not the only person who is a bit uncomfortable with the Crows in both concept and practice (yes, I do understand that they’re based on the comics, though). So I really appreciated—and found it super powerful—that it was Ryan who delivered the line “The Crows were dirty.” Sometimes I get confused as to whether Batwoman is portraying the Crows as good or bad, so lines like that give me comfort in knowing that the show at the very least acknowledges the problematic nature of an overmilitarized private police force that has been contracted out to have dominion over a city whose population includes a significant amount of low income people.
8. Bonus: They did good by the shippers. Batmoore shippers got some closure by observing Sophie’s grief process and hearing the letter Kate left her. Pennymoore shippers are certainly getting emotional and significant content for their ship. And for clowns like me, the show introduced a great new ship, Mary/Ryan, that I adore even though I know it won’t be canoning, lol.
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battlestar-royco · 3 years
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IT'S BEEN 84 YEARS. LET'S TALK ABOUT NETFLIX'S SHADOW AND BONE.
8.7/10 ⭐️
spoilers for everythingggg under the cut! i'll be discussing its merits as an adaptation vs as a show, characters and plots, and the overall aesthetic and magic/world.
SHOW VS ADAPTATION:
i say this as someone who knows all the books very well and has been in the fandom for nearly a decade, so i'm biased. but. s&b functions better as an adaptation than as a standalone show. alina's plot moves so well, and satisfyingly renders so many iconic scenes and sites from s&b. the worldbuilding is also pretty easy to fall into, with a forgivable amount of voiceover/infodump. and, hurting budget aside, i mostly liked this visual interpretation of the gv.
(sidebar: the in-universe racism... doesn't work. i tried to view it in good faith but imo it was very heavy-handed. if it was framed like, "wow it's a SHU WOMAN saving the world!!!" it might've been better, but it's just racism without recompense. and it's a terrible look to make other characters of color racist. i just. why?)
as for the crows, however... i'm just not sure how strong they'll be for new viewers? i totally understand why they were included, and i really like certain connections the show made between the two series. it was a great decision to introduce the druskelle in the first Cut scene, and showing nina as a ravkan spy.
the new crows stuff felt in character, but i think the show is at its height when it sticks to the books. the first couple episodes switching between tgt and proto-soc gave me whiplash, but luckily it got more organic as it progressed. if i didn't know and love all the crows before going in, i wouldn't be that invested in them based on season 1. aside from a couple fantastic scenes, it really felt like the writers were trying to make fetch happen for like 4 episodes before they figured out what to do with everyone. plus, ravka is such a different vibe from ketterdam--tonally, sartorially, technologically, etc they didn't totally feel like the same world. it was pretty jarring. although i prefer the duo to the trio, s&b is alina's story and she is That Bitch who walked so the crows could fly. so i didn't hate their inclusion but the shoehorned content did at times disservice both plots, imo.
CHARACTERS:
way too many, which is yet another consequence of smushing everyone into one season.
MAL/ALINA/DARKLING: first and foremost, and i PROMISE i'm not saying this just to be a hater, but there needed to be less malina. i'll be the first to say that show!mal really has what book!mal wants. the new pre-fold scenes were so good. li and renaux have amazing chemistry, and their laughter over stolen grapes was a highlight. his stag plot was also good. THAT SAID, there were way too many keramzin flashbacks and malina parallels like.. 🤢🤢why do they want us to love mal so much. for what. they only needed the teacup scene but they clearly thought they were doing something with micro-aggressions and that meadow shot they showed like 6 times. knowing mal's original character, and how they scrubbed his show counterpart almost to the point of flawlessness, he's just never going to be my fave even though i do respect what they did with him. also, why were there like 5 fake deaths for this dude? boring.
the darkling was great. ben barnes knows what the fuck he's about, and he funneled manipulation and charisma into every scene. as for the backstory: at first i really wasn't feeling it, but i eventually did warm up to it and i'm so glad they showed it because oh god the cut and the creation of the fold were SO FUCKING ICONIC. also, love love love the baghra development. WE LOVE TO SEE OLD WOMEN/MOMS WHO AREN'T "EVIL"/"CORRUPTED" BY THEIR MAGICAL POWERS!!!!!!! BITCH! it didn't have to be 12 minutes long though.
i honestly don't have much to say on alina. jml was excellent in her role and very true to the book. without her book narration she feels much more consistently written.
TRILOGY CHARACTERS: i really felt the lack of genya and zoya. genya's character and actress are perfectly layered and effective, even though their roles are relatively minor. i'm so looking forward to her razrushost moment, but i wish they'd laid more groundwork for it. (and i hope throw out the wig and just dye her hair next season.) also like. WHY KEEP THE IRRELEVANT MEAN GIRL/DARKLING THIRST PLOT FOR ZOYA??? AFTER ALL THE EFFORT THEY PUT INTO IMPROVING MAL? they sacrificed so much for malina at the expense of other characters. finally, it was interesting how they decided to kill marie. i love the tailor magic flex. but also they clearly just did that to emotionally manipulate us and connect the crows so. hm.
CROWS: speaking of! the crows storyline felt a little like filler. honestly i wish they waited to roll crows into later seasons. i'd prefer little foreshadowings about them, a la the druskelle cameo or the references to nina and matthias. introducing the crows so soon makes the ice court heist feel less special. the recruitment was super tight and pragmatic, so this felt a little fluffy/fanservicey. kaz also comes off as sooooo old again. especially without the vulnerability of his book counterpart, he just seems like a 40-year-old in a 20something body.
i was pleasantly surprised to find jesper my favorite crow. like wow.... second amendment rights for jesper fahey only!! i like all the crows but book!kanej are my faves by a long shot. they felt a bit stiff tbh, like the actors were a little uncomfy with each other and/or their exposition-heavy lines. however, the one scene that felt EXTREMELY kanej to me was when they killed that dude in the church holy fuck oh my god. WE STAN AN ANGSTY BATTLE COUPLE WHO ARE BOTH DEAD INSIDE. highlight for sure.
and i actually kinda loved helnik? i know helnik is controversial for very valid reasons, but i thoughy their dynamic was fantastic and they were among the strongest performers. it was much less overwhelming than the constantly interweaving kaz/inej/jesper imo. they need to fire their location scout though. those green screen mountains and beaches were um. interesting.
aesthetic and magic:
i really hope they get a bigger budget for costumes, cgi, and sets next season! the keftas are serviceable, but they look a little cheap at times. i will also never forgive ANY of the crows' hats. it's mostly just a personal aesthetic thing but god i fucking hate them. the darkling was best dressed, but in general i liked the ravkan look more than the kerch. why were the crows always in the most elaborate getups? why couldn't they just chill in their waistcoats??? they never seemed relaxed in the way alina and co did; the clothes never felt worn or broken in.
favorite sets: the darkling's room, the crow club, all the grisha tents, the matthias/nina ship, the church where inej killed the squaller, outdoor fountain where they told the story of the black heretic. the lighting was almost always right for each scene, and there was so much detail in every one of them.
THE MAGIC WAS SO COOL! my greatest beef is alina's light--it often looked so fake, and it washed out jml. oftentimes it was fluorescent or blue, and it was used as a forcefield or orb. it's supposed to be sunlight bro. what is so hard about that? the darkling's magic looked good, other than the fold. i've always imagined the fold more like a huge black fog rather than a literal wall. so that was a bit game of thronesy, but not terrible.
and can we talk about the amplifiers? amplifiers are my personal favorite gv lore but season 1 barely gets into them. they never mention the bear zoya slew, nor do they establish the unique strength of the stag, sea dragon, and firebird. BUT THE ANTLER COLLAR FUSED INTO ALINA'S SKIN WAS SUPER DARK AND MACABRE AND I KINDA LIKED IT? ALTHOUGH I HAVE TO WONDER HOW TF IS SHE GONNA SLEEP???
if you made it this far, thanks so much! that's all i have for today.
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wheredidthe80sgo · 3 years
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So... Shadow and Bone
Ok, this will contain spoilers for the show, so if you don’t want to know, don’t read ahead. 
-Ok, first things first, holy shit. Holy shit I can’t deal. I laughed and smiled my entire way through because everyone was just so perfect. 
-The casting stood out to me immediately. I mean we all knew that they were amazing when we first saw them, but seeing them on screen was just something else.
-Adding Alina’s backstory was a bit huh? Like they made her half-Shu, and that was pretty cool I guess but it was just kind of there. Also, I don’t remember that in the books, so if it was mentioned there then that’s cool but I just don’t remember it at all so.
-The Crows. The motherfucking Crows. I honestly think combining the two shows was the greatest decision they made because the Crows just lit up the screen everytime they appeared. Don’t get me wrong here, I love Shadow and Bone, but by itself I just think it would have been kind of weak. 
-Kaz’s introduction. Jesper’s introduction. Inej’s introduction. They were all brilliant. I adore them. 
-Kaz’s cane. That’s it. I want one.
-The backstories on all of the characters felt kind of flat to me tbh, mostly because there weren’t really any. They briefly explained Inej’s connection to the Menagerie (which was an interesting choice to still have her there imo) but apart from that there wasn’t much. Kaz’s backstory wasn’t mentioned at all and I think I only realised his not liking to be touched thing because I was a fan. Jesper’s backstory was just non-existent. Of course Alina, Mal and the Darkling’s were there as well but apart from that I didn’t really feel like I knew anyone all that well.
-Kaz and Inej were just- yeah. It was literally so understated. Like in the books I didn’t realise they were meant to be a thing until like halfway through, when they were on the boat, but in the show I just didn’t realise at all. There were flashes of it all throughout but because Kaz is an idiot of course he didn’t say anything. I thought it was nice but I did miss a lot of those iconic lines. (I wished they had developed their relationship enough to get to the ‘I will have you with armour, Kaz Brekker’ line because that’s my favourite.)
-Jesper. Jesper. Jesper. Kit was SO GOOD. Jesper was honestly my favourite part of the show. He was perfect in every scene he had and I was so so happy to see how well Kit did. Also, when they said that you would definitely know Jesper was bi and I held out hope that maybe it would be mentioned briefly but then he hooked up with a guy? Man, I almost cried.
-I do miss Wylan though. So, so much.
-Nina and Matthias were... well, they were perfect, obviously. The dynamic between Danielle and Calahan was just amazing, but I was kind of confused. If you’d read the books you would understand Nina’s importance and why we cared so much about her but the show just didn’t develop that as well, which was a shame. It felt a little out of place amidst all the other action, but I guess it worked out in the end with Nina on the ship to Ketterdam with the Crows and Matthias on to Hellgate. 
-The scenes with them walking were just perfect. I only just reread the books the other day and the dialogue was exactly the same. Nina, my wife, I would die for you.
-Kaz’s hair.
-Milo.
-Maybe it’s just all of the edits, but I couldn’t stop making fun of the Darkling. Every time he came on screen I would make some sort of comment. My favourite was during the Darkling/Kaz face-off (the Darkling/Kaz face-off!!!!!) and I couldn’t stop thinking about how the Darkling got bested by a seventeen year old with PTSD. 
-They made me like Mal. They fucking made me like Mal. Archie was so good. 
-The thing I liked about Mal and Alina more so than in the books was that the set-up to their relationship was so much better. You could so clearly see that Mal already had feelings for Alina and he just didn’t realise and I thought that it was really really sweet the way they carried it out. Thank you Jessie and Archie.
-Genya, Zoya, Marie and Nadia were just perfect. When Marie died I cried a little. Also Zoya being there at the very end of the show with the rest of them made me laugh, idk why it just did.
-Seeing the SAB and SOC characters on screen together was just so odd. Not in a bad way, just in a really weird way like worlds colliding.
-Inej’s relationship with her religion and especially Alina was so perfect. I cried when she saw Alina use her power for the first time. The look on her face, I- someone protect this girl.
-I also cried when the stag died. That was just awful. I loved that stag. 
-I do admit that Darklina is just... so hot. Like woah. Just woah.
-Genya and David. Yes.
-So I know exactly where they’re going with Alina and Mal’s storyline, with the destroying the Fold and everything, but I have no idea how the Crows are going to be incorporated into that. Like, if we get a season two, what are they going to do? Smuggle her into Ravka? Again? 
-I had to do an in conclusion for myself last night but it didn’t work so I’ll do one now: the Crows are headed back to Ketterdam with Nina and Matthias on board and Nina and the Crows have just met and are going to ally up I think. Alina and Mal are also headed to Ketterdam instead of Novyi Zem (?). Zoya is still in Ravka, the Darkling is alive and emerged dramatically from the Fold in basically the same vicinity as Zoya, Genya and David and the rest of them are back in East Ravka and Nikolai and Wylan are nowhere to be found.
-(Will I ever get over two of my favourite characters in the entire Grishaverse not being in the first season of the show? No, no I will not.)
TL:DR the show was amazing. I loved how true it was to most aspects of the books. I thought the cast was just perfect and I loved everyone. I really really hope they get a season two. 
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themosleyreview · 4 years
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The Mosley Review: Best Films of 2019
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Wohoo! 2019 has come and gone and man did it fly by. This year we had sooooo many fantastic films and this year was probably the hardest list to put together. I really wanted to include alot more, but I had to make a few cuts. Now I tend to keep my list to the traditional 10 films, but on some occasions I've extended it to 11. This is one of those occasions. I have one runner up that is worth mentioning and I think it should not be missed.
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Missing Link: Many animated films are computer generated now and the art of hand drawn animation is rarely shown. The one type of animation that is all but extinct is stop motion animation. It takes time, patience and passion to bring to life characters with such sophistication and care in an almost forgotten art form. The masterminds at Laika are truly imaginative artist and this film shows that in every frame. Not many films take the story of the myth behind Sasquatch to fun places without being hokey and I was relieved that this film took it seriously and pumped so much fun and heart into the story and I think this was a hidden gem of 2019. Click the title for my full review.
Now, on to my list of 2019's best films of the year. If you want my full review of each film then go ahead and click the title of each film. First one up is definitely a fantastic sequel to a film that the author hated, but loved the film adaptation of his second book.
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Doctor Sleep: The Shining is a classic that can never really be touched. Stephen King is famously known for disliking the film adaptation of his novel, but with his blessing placed upon Mike Flanagan's vision for the sequel novel, we got this magnificent film. Not only does this film pay tribute to Stanley Kubrick's film, but it also follows the same rules and visual structure while keeping the film fresh. The tone was consistent and the performances were across the board amazing. Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson and the talented Kyliegh Curran deliver absolute greatness. This film features stunning and intriguing dark moments, but definitely has one of the most disturbing scenes I've ever seen and its all because of Jacob Tremblay's performance in THAT scene.
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Ready or Not: How many times have we seen the family initiation story in a romantic comedy? A dozen times I tell you! Well how about you take the same concept, throw in a fun horror version of hide and seek with a hint of the supernatural and great dark comedic writing. You get this fantastic film that is all of that and more. Luckily I stayed away from any major trailers for this film because in retrospect, the R rated trailer gave away too many of the fun gags. The performance of each family member was awesome and this was a standout performance for Samara Weaving. Every year from now on, this film will be on my Halloween watchlist. I loved this film and I can't recommend it enough.
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Shazam!: Batman (1989), Superman (1978), The Dark Knight Trilogy and Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse are just to name a few of perfect adaptations of a comic book character to screen. This film was beyond perfection in many ways and the best DC film to date. This film had the right amount of fun, darkness and heart that embodies the life of the titular character. I could see the amount of genuine fun the cast was having on screen and the heartfelt performances of Asher Angel and Zachary Levi were outstanding. Jack Dylan Grazer stole the film with his amazing comedic speed and wit. This was truly a film I had high hopes for and it didn't disappoint.
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Avengers: Endgame: How do you start a story in 2008 and bring it to an amazing and satisfying conclusion that wraps up 11 years of storytelling? You have a plan, a clear vision from the very beginning and with that it'll special success. Producer Kevin Feige set out on a journey to bring to life some of the best superheroes and keep them together in a cohesive and long formed narrative to complete a saga that's never been done before. He did it with the best talent behind each film's camera and The Russo Brothers have delivered the most epic film the superhero film genre has ever seen. I have waited my entire life to hear Captain America say "Avengers Assemble!" and I'm so happy I've lived long enough for my dream to come true. This was an emotional journey and end to The Infinity Saga. I really can say so much more about this crowning achievement in storytelling, but I'll keep this summary short.
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Rocketman: It was only a mater of time before we got a biopic about the incomparable music legend Elton John. I was hoping that it would not shy away from his sexuality, addictions and his bright and explosive since of style. Well this film jumped right in and held nothing back and I loved every bit. It was truly a fantastical film that had enough gravity and style. The musical locations illustrate his most important moments in his life and are visually stunning and accurate recreations of his most iconic performances. Taron Egerton was Elton John and I loved that he sang all the music. This was truly a masterpiece.
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1917: World War II films are a dime a dozen, but the World War I films are rare. Sam Mendes is one of the best directors and all of his films take you on a journey through the eyes, mind and soul of a character and he did exactly that in this film. The fact that this film is almost shot completely in one continuous take, gives every moment gravitas and tension as you watch our main character go along and across enemy lines to prevent an ambush. The score was truly haunting by Thomas Newman and my favorite piece from this film was from the flare scene. Such an stunning achievement in filmmaking should not be missed.
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Joker: The clown prince of crime has had many iterations over the past 80 years. The most influential and canonical version of the character came from Frank Miller's The Killing Joke. Heath Ledger's take was iconic and made you scared because of his unpredictability. Joaquin Phoenix has taken the character and given a truly disturbing and authentic performance. As Arthur Fleck, we see through a constantly unraveling psyche, a man become a new and real kind of monster. Not only is this version the most unsettling, but it was beautiful. The cinematography was great and I loved how we got into the mind and heart of the character when he wasn't even speaking. This is a definition of how a person being pushed through horrible conditions can truly become a monster and yet be free. I loved this film and I think it will be studied in many acting classes from here on out.
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Ford v Ferrari: There needs to be more racing films of this caliber! I love racing films that are not just about the cars, but also the drivers and their stories. This film was based on the true friendship between Carol Shelby and Ken Miles and I can't say enough how much attention to detail and heart that was put into every frame. The sound design in this film was crisp and powerful. The performances by both Matt Damon and Christian Bale was truly amazing and they had the best chemistry. Their fight scene was the funniest and most realistic fight I've ever seen between 2 friends. James Mangold is one of my favorite directors because of his focus on characters and story first before the action. This was a love letter to the world of racing and a respectful look at the lives of these pioneers of ingenuity and racing.
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How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World: How do you make a perfect trilogy? How do you wrap it up with a satisfying and emotional ending? You focus on the story and stay true to the message and heart you started with in the beginning. You let the character bonds naturally grow and make each adventure a learning experience. This film was a perfect ending to the franchise and I can't stress how much I felt like I was with Hiccup and Toothless on their journey to this conclusion. The performances from the cast were stellar as always and although the villain may not have been as great, he still was a good addition. The visuals were the best and the textures in the scales and sand were out of this world. The score by John Powell truly brought me to tears as I got to say goodbye to my favorite companions. If you ever owned a pet, you known the emotional bond that is forged. This was the ultimate pay off and as a pet owner I saw my dog in Toothless' eyes. I will miss this franchise. If you're not crying by the end of this film then something is wrong with you.
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The Peanut Butter Falcon: There are some independent films that take a risk in going outside of the norm and telling a story that nobody would have ever dreamed. This film was truly something special and I can't tell you how happy I was throughout. This film focuses on an individual with down syndrome whose dream is to become a wrestler and it is something truly inspirational and heartwarming. Zack Gottsagen was truly brilliant and awesome in this film. I loved his journey and his will to keep going. Shia Lebouf delivers an equally powerful performance and his chemistry with Zack was very sweet. This is one of the best films of 2019 and the most important films of the decade.
And here we are ladies and gentlemen! This is the moment you've all been reading toward. This film was an automatic choice for me the moment the end credits rolled. The crowing jewel of 2019 is none other than.....
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Booksmart: I have seen so many high school teen comedies about partying or loosing your virginity before graduation, but never have I seen a film so engaging and focused on the bond of two bestfriends. Their bond was the heart and soul of the film and you couldn't have asked for a better pair of actresses. Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever were beyond perfection in every moment of this film and they had me cracking up left and right. Their adventure over the course of one night was truly fun and you are along for the hilarious ride. Billie Lourd nearly stole the whole film out from under them with her surprising and hilarious appearances. The music choices in the film were awesome as well. The comedy in this film was so fresh and from the first 6 minutes of the film you’re locked into these two ladies chemistry. I can't stress enough how much joy this film brought me and for a film to be on my mind for the entire year and to have me constantly recommending it to everyone I know is an achievement of itself. Olivia Wilde has directed a true masterpiece and new definition of a coming of age story. I can't stop gushing about this film so I'll finish off by saying WATCH THIS FILM!
And that is my list of the best films of 2019 and man has it been a great year in film. Lets hope 2020 starts off the decade with a bang! Thanks for reading everyone.
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3195c · 4 years
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The Dark Knight: How Heath Ledger's Joker Was Born
2020.7
On the occasion of The Dark Knight’s 10th anniversary, we spoke with make-up artist John Caglione, Jr., who was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on The Dark Knight along with Conor O'Sullivan. Caglione had previously won an Oscar for his makeup on Dick Tracy back in 1991, so he came into The Dark Knight with some very relevant experience in the realm of creating grotesqueries. But when it came to birthing a new version of the Joker, the makeup artist quickly realized that he would be crossing into some new and uncomfortable terrain.
“So I read the script for The Dark Knight, and having seen the first one of Chris Nolan’s trilogy, I got the feeling it was going to be more of kind of an organic-looking thing,” Caglione explains. “It was going to be kind of real, not so comic book-y. Going in, and then talking to Chris, meeting him, it became a more realistic approach to the makeup. … What would it be if this guy slept in this makeup? You know, this psychopath. If he didn’t spruce up his makeup for two or three weeks. And, you know, he never changes his clothes in the film. … It was those kinds of organic details that really helps.” When Caglione joined the production, Ledger was already signed on to play the iconic villain. The makeup designer’s earliest meetings were with the actor, director, and costume designer Lindy Hemming, followed by Caglione creating five or six color sketches as overlays of headshots of Ledger complete with green hair, different kinds of clown makeup, scars, and so on. This was followed with some makeup tests with Ledger in London, but as the process continued, it became clear that Caglione had to abandon his artist’s instinct to get everything just right. “You know, you go into it, and you’re trying, as a makeup artist, I’m always trained to do every little detail,” he says. “And you think of a clown makeup, and for the most part they’re pretty detailed with sharp lines, but this had to be the opposite of that. It had to look very broken down, very… very lived in. So, yeah, my first few times were too perfect, so I had to kind of let my hand go. And it was hard, it was really hard to do that. And I remember the first week, the first few days on set, I would look at the makeup, and you don’t know the context of the film and the overall vision, and you’re looking at it as a makeup artist. And I’m saying, this is the worst makeup in the world here! You know? And, it was like, oh, am I doing the right thing?
“And you’re looking at all the great makeups in history,” he continues. “Not just the Joker, but Clarabell and so many other greats -- you know, Emmett Kelly. And they’re always just very accurate, very precise makeups, and then here comes this. Ahhh! But, thank God it all worked out, right?” It’s easy to forget now, but before The Dark Knight was released, the standard bearer of Joker makeups was the Jack Nicholson version from Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman. But Caglione says that as far as he can recall, that design was never really discussed when creating the Ledger Joker. In fact, even the idea of the Joker’s white face being the result of an accident -- which is clearly the case in the Burton film -- just didn’t fit in the Nolan world of Batman. “The first Batman was amazing,” says Caglione. “I love Nicholson’s makeup. And I love the whole approach that Tim Burton [took] … the comic book style of the film, it worked. Everything about that film was great. So, in the back of my mind, maybe subconsciously it was there, but no, it never came up in meetings or discussions. It was, let’s roll up our sleeves and make this thing look like a real person could have done this to themselves. … I think it was always discussed, that this was a possible -- you know, just a psychopath. A real person that just gets into this whole thing. It’s almost like a split personality. And so, yeah, it’s a madman in makeup. It’s that concept.”
Part of the “doing this to themselves” aspect of the character includes the question of those scars on either side of this Joker’s face. Of course, the film itself leaves the question of where the scars came from open to interpretation, as unknowable as the Joker’s ever-changing origin. “I always got the impression that it was self-inflicted,” says Caglione. “But it’s up to you to decide. Was he punished, was it abuse? Was it an abusive situation? It could have been [and] that just tipped him over the edge. Mutilation, self-mutilation. We never really know for sure.” Not surprisingly, Ledger himself was very involved in creating the makeup with Nolan and Caglione. Indeed, he was essential to getting the worn and cracked look of his Joker just right. “It was great with Heath, it was just a great experience,” says Caglione. “He was a great person to work with every day. It was like a dance, because certain parts of the makeup, to get those cracks and all the drippy stuff, you really need the cooperation of the actor’s facial gestures when laying down the makeup and the paint. So we had a lot of fun together on that movie.”
Achieving the desired effect essentially involved Ledger acting in the makeup chair. “He would contort his face or raise his eyebrows,” recalls Caglione. “Or I would even take one hand and kind of scrunch the corner of his eyes to create crows’ feet, you know, draw those wrinkles, and brush grays and white colors over it, and he would relax and you would get all these expressive lines and details that just come naturally. Listen, it’s an old theater trick. They were doing it in the turn of the century, the 1920s in theater. Actors would put white makeup on and scrunch their face and let it go, and then paint little brown lines. So it’s nothing that we really invented. It was a throwback to old makeup techniques.” Another throwback in the design process came in the famous interrogation scene, where things get real rough between the Caped Crusader and the Clown Prince of Crime. “So, Heath and I would always be like, gee, what could we do a little different toward the end of the sequence?” recalls Caglione. “And I remember one time we’re talking about the scene where he gets beat up by Batman. He’s in the jail cell. And at the end of the scene, he wanted to have a different look, Heath. And I was thinking about what we can do with the eyes, the black and stuff. And I went, you know, there was this great villain in the Chaplin films, he was played -- the actor was Eric Campbell, and he always played the big heavy in all the Chaplin movies. And he always had these big, black eyes that kind of had these black eyebrows. And Heath was like, well, let me see a picture. So I pulled it up, and we kind of went for that kind of look. It was a throwback to an old Chaplin villain from the silent screen days.”
According to Caglione, Christopher Nolan wasn’t the kind of director who said “I want you to do exactly this.” Instead, he would offer inspiration and guidance. Take, for example, the paintings of Francis Bacon that he brought to Ledger and Caglione early in the design process. “I think it was his way of saying, let’s blur this, let’s loosen this up,” says Caglione. “Here’s a book, look at it, and maybe you’ll find some inspiration. And it really helped, you know, we turned a corner. He didn’t have to say much, but that was the way it kind of went. And then Heath helped me to relax. The great actors help you relax so you can really bring it, and you can just try different things and feel free to do it. But that Francis Bacon painting, that day that Chris came in and plopped that down and we went through some pages… He said, yeah, maybe look at this picture, look at that picture. I think he actually had some of the pictures tagged with Post-its that he likes. Just for inspiration.” Funny enough, it was a Francis Bacon painting in the 1989 Batman that the Jack Nicholson Joker spared during his gang’s rampage in the Gotham City museum. Coincidence? Who can say? Of course, sadly Heath Ledger passed away before The Dark Knight was released. He went on to receive a posthumous Oscar for the role, but had he not died, the actor could’ve returned as the Joker. Caglione recalls Ledger talking about his ideas for the character beyond The Dark Knight.
“Yes, he did, he actually did talk to me about it,” he says. “He wanted to… start at the Arkham Asylum. And his idea -- I don’t know if he ever talked to Chris. This is just private moments in the chair with Heath, and conversations like, wouldn’t it be great to go back and see what really happened to this guy, how he became what he became? And why he just, you know, flipped out and became maniacal? And he always thought it would be great to go back to the asylum, or even before that. So it was just chit-chat in the chair. … Because I’m sure as an actor, he needs to know the origins of the character; it’s really important to him. “He was excited about the idea of going back in time, and seeing how he became the Joker. You know, the evolution of the character,” says Caglione. “It would have been cool. It would have been cool.”
Indeed, it would’ve been cool. But at least we’ll always have Heath Ledger’s amazing performance from The Dark Knight, and the unforgettable look of the character created by Christopher Nolan, John Caglione, Jr., Conor O'Sullivan, Lindy Hemming and, of course, Ledger himself.
[YouTube]
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whosxafraid · 5 years
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holy christmas dudes....has it really been two years already? i mean i feel like it was yesterday i hesitantly made this blog without any real hope anyone would want to interact with this over sized old man but needing to make the blog anyway because the fecker wouldn’t be quiet---but here we are...and just damn.
Giveaway Guidelines:
Give away begins: now - 03/25/19 Give away ends : 6:00pm EST - 03/29/19
1. One like/re-blog per blog.
 I get really turned around and easily confused so please make this  easier on me and only either re-blog the post or like the post.   But only do either one once.          
2. Must be following Luka and be an RP blog in order to participate.
Please don’t just follow to participate in the giveaway, okay? I can’t control you following and then un-following but its super   rude and just karma’s a bitch okay?
3. I need a week or so to get the prizes out after the giveaway ends.
 Bare with me. I keep my promises it just takes me time.
4. Winners will be chosen using the random number generator. Keeps everything nice and fair :)
5. If you are a multi-muse and win, please be prepared to chose one of your muses for icons made.
6. If you win and your muse’s fc is not well known or has little screen time, please be prepared to help me out if I can’t find suitable resources on my own for graphics/icons/etc.
7. If you win and you have a favorite picture or resource(aka movie/episode/etc) in which your muse’s fc is portrayed please feel free to let me know!
8. If you win please be prepared to provide a primary color and/or scheme you would like the graphics/icons to have.
PRIZES:
1st Place: 1 promo graphic, 1 set of Online/Offline/Lurking/Drafts banners, 25 [200x100] icons, psd and watermarked with your chosen letter(s).
2nd Place: 1 promo graphic and 25 [200x100] icons, psd and watermarked with your chosen letter(s). .
3rd Place: 1 promo graphic
                                                    ƓƠƠƊ ԼƲƇƘ!
follow forever beneath the cut
@brooklynislandgirl / @tarnishedhalo / @quothesquills
yes hi i love you always? lol thank you for being my partner is so many fictional crimes. for being a like minded cray like me but also constantly teaching me and bettering me as a person literally every day. i love how we can finish each other sentences sometimes, and are so alike and then completely different so we end up seeing more angles to things. you can put me in tears one second and then rip my soul out the next. i like u, ur a good. so ur kinda stuck with me. stay you cuz otherwise im gonna be feckin lost. 
@morgansmornings
also yes hello is this thing on? I LOVE YOU. yer a fecking gem of a human being and while u may not need me too i will go to war with my bat swinging for u always. you make me laugh when i wanna cry and always are an ear when i need to vent. i love ur imagination and ur brain and i can not gush enough about how amazing ur muse is. its takes someone extraordinary to make someone extraordinary. and your muse is extraordinary. remember that if nothing else. besties always cuz im keeping u sorry not sorry.
@seanceisms / @umbrellakidstm / @wolventm / @scciopath
fucking beautiful human being you are okay. i love you always and i will follow you across any blog you ever make. and that sounded way less stalkerish in my head but whatever you get it. u can’t escape me LOL. always an ear and always a joy to talk to even when we’re doing nothing but trading pictures or headcanons or screaming about stupidity we find or murdering each other with feels. 
@riggsanity
my dude ur a fecking treasure. ur humor is sharp and i love that. your amazing at your hobby and i love every reply i get from you. i love that we can have conversations that stretch over hours because we both get distracted or get busy but we always know where we’re at.  ur fantastic and im blessed to have met you.
@mynameisanakin
there are too many inside jokes and not enough time to list them all. this is a friendship that i fucking love and never wanna lose. ur unique and ur a fecking trip and i LOVE that about you. the sometimes brutal honesty is refreshing to say the least, and i can not word how much i love our thread and our future plots. stay golden like the sand in our Jamaican no fig capes. ;)
@the-blackest-spider
holy balls dude like how long have we known each other at this point? i cant even remember. all i know is i love u and i know we dont talk as much as we used too but i love that we can pick up right where we left off when we do and there’s not a beat missed. ur brilliant and will always ALWAYS be ‘my natasha’. 
@tabbyrp and  @corinnebaileyrp
you two are gifts okay. always have something kind to say to me. always checking on me when my ooc posts get a little weird and sideways. (more than usual anyway). i love both of you and i love our plots and threads. every single one. -throws cookies at both with exuberance- 
@thor-theavengergod
one of my closest dudes.i miss ur thor so much. but im glad we can stay connected on discord. ur artwork is GLORIOUS and always a joy to see pop up on my dash. you’re always an ear and never afraid to say what you think. and that’s really rare in this day and age. Keep being amazing my dude. u shine and it shows!
@bettershotthanbucky | @edithbarton / @hitslikeatruck / @mutatiiions
okay but like world of an au and plot we built i love it. you dudes are fucking beautiful and will always be my bartons(and wolverine/Piotr/and the rest). always. we dont always talk or are in each others day to day but when we do it’s always a riot. you guys are my dudes, dudes. never ever ever ever forget that. i’ll always be here for u dudes. whenever u need me and i know u’ll be the same for me cuz that’s just how ride or die dudes roll. -all the hugs-
@daggermxchanic
man let me talk about how fucking great it is to get to write luka with someone close to where he’s from even if it’s not the same time frame. Its amazing. I love your muse and i love the oppertunities he gives me to explore other facets of luka. Two grumpy old men never gets old and i LOVE ALL OF IT. ur a fucking amazing and don’t let no body tell u different my dude. ur classic.
@deathisachoice
okay we interact more on my pirate blog but fuck it i do what i want. im so glad u were able to finish ur thesis. im glad its behind u and that weight has been lifted. im super excited to get to talk to u more again and make awesome plots for our pirates (and maybe here too). either way ur writing is amazing and so are u. always a joy to talk to and write with!!
@ruthlessmeans / @mockeryofreason
okay but i love u alot. and i wish i could bat away all the bad that’s been happening as of late. just teach it a lesson so it fucks off permanently. but as i cant all i can do is offer cookies and remind u ur loved. i admire the decidcation that u have to ur muses. i love how u think through every angle and facet of them. that speaks volumes about u as a person. keep ur chin up my dude. ur silver lining is coming.
@canadianclaws
not so much rp’ing anymore but we stay in touch over discord and u literally NEVER fail to make me laugh even when i don’t want too or i’m feeling like something four days dead. i absolutely adore u and our friendship and i love that we can just drop funny fucking shit in our chat at random hours on any given day and its no big ya know? JUST LOVE U A LOT -tackle squishes-
@cochetsharpshooter
one of my best dudes and a fucking peach too boot. always uplifting and always the best gifs. years of jokes lbr and no enough angst and time in the day to write it all every probably. u are my bucky, always and forever. never lose ur wonder and ur drive my dude. ur inspiring. truly.
@ronmanmob
a gift with words right here. dedication to your muse on a level i’ve never seen. its phenomenal. always good vibes to talk to, always up beat. its honestly wonderful that we’re mutuals. always love reading your rps and ur blog is general is epic. keep it up. ur a gem.
@noprodigalson
life has gotten busy for u. taken u in different directions and that’s just something that happens. that’s life. but getting to see u pop up on my dash now and then. little updates and fashion drops it warms me up. ur style sense is amazing and so is ur hair. (yes i still want those pants). ur a beautiful human and hopefully life will let u get back to ur hobby here real soon. all my love my dude!
To all my of my followers: 
you all brilliant lights in the world, in your own ways. Never, ever, EVER forget that. you are amazing. you are all special. to me and the other people in your lives that mean the most. stay frosty. and KEEP WRITING. ALWAYS KEEP WRITING. NO MATTER WHAT. NO MATTER THE TRIALS. KEEP WRITING!!  because remember there was a time when the world thought Van Gogh wasn’t worth anything at all and now he’s a house hold name even little kids know who he is. 
BE BRAVE
BE CREATIVE
BE YOU NO MATTER WHAT
-Crow
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Finally Meeting You
description:  May I request a scenario where Kenma and his s/o only know each other from the Internet (they play video games together and grew close) and the scenario is when they meet for the first time after being internet friends for like a year or two?
requested: yes! This was a fun and sweet request! I enjoyed writing it so I hope you enjoy reading it! since there were no specifications, reader is female pronouns~Admin Crow
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‘...Do you maybe want to meet up? In real life this time?’  
Kenma stared at the screen, really? You wanted to actually meet him? In real life Kenma? It’s been almost two years since you first met playing an online game. At first it started off as an irritating co-player who somehow always managed to be one step ahead of him. He thought it was some kid out to show off his skills and be cocky. 
But the first time he heard high pitch laughter and the ‘suck it nerds I beat you all fair and square!’ he knew it was something that would change his life forever. Not that anyone would be able to tell outwardly. It just meant that he started leaving after practice earlier than normal, all the time hoping when he turned on his game, that familiar username would have the little green online icon next to it. 
And thus began a weekly routine. Sometimes it was multiple times a week, others maybe once or twice. Depending on the schedule. You found out a lot about each other, each of you having more confidence hiding behind a screen and username. Eventually you at least shared first names and got to know things about each other you wouldn’t typically share with someone you have never met in person before. But it was different with you two. Everything just seemed to click. 
Which made Kenma only hesitate more. Not that he really cared that much, but he was curious what you would think of him if you saw him in real life. He was honest with you about anything you wanted to know about him, so It isn’t like he told you he was some 6 ft tall attractive guy. But who knew what kind of impression you made of him in your mind? What if he wasn’t what you were imagining? I guess the only way to find out was to agree to meet up and see what happened.
Sure. That sounds like a good idea. 
Kenma replied back, hoping he wasn’t making a mistake by agreeing to go beyond the tv screen and mixing his online gaming life with the reality of real life. 
You were nervous. It was obvious by the way you fiddled with the hem of your favorite f/c dress. It was simple enough, yet cute. So you wouldn’t come across as trying too hard. Besides, the converse shoes you were wearing that you had drawn on and colored different gaming characters from your favorite games definitely offset the ‘trying too hard’ look. You were comfortable, so why the hell were you so nervous?
Checking the time on your phone once again you saw it read 1:26pm. Four  minutes. You were supposed to meet him in four minutes. Was he already here? Was he running late? Forcing yourself to take a deep breath to calm your nerves, you slapped your cheeks. What are you so nervous about? This is Kenma! The same guy you’ve talked to almost every other day for the past year, almost two years! You already new him, you were really close! Maybe having a crush on the guy made it a little more nerve wracking; but still, this should be a piece of cake. 
Sitting on a bench not that far away from where you were currently standing, Kenma was in a similar state. Unsure if he should have agreed to this. He was surrounded by people he didn’t know. He had arrived an hour earlier, and was playing his game on his portable device to pass the time. To also distract him from the most nerve wracking meeting of his life. 
From the peripheral of his gaming device, Kenma saw a pair of colorful converse shoes standing in front of him. On the top of the left one he noticed a character from the game he played with you...it was a picture of his....avatar character? 
Looking up slowly, he took in the simple f/c dress attached to the funky looking shoes and looked up into the eyes of a girl; her h/c locks up in simple ponytail, a curious look in said e/c orbs. 
“F/N?”
“Kenma?” 
It was her!- uh you! Nodding shortly, he put down his game and stood up, not making eye contact. Hoping to hide the slight blush he could feel growing on his cheeks. You were so much prettier than he had imagined. 
“You are exactly how I imagined you would be! Pudding head and everything!” you said giggling. The fact that he was exactly as you pictured, suddenly had your nerves at ease. Except for the butterflies that still flew around in your stomach. 
“uh-yeah. That’s good. You’re pretty much as I imagined you as well...” he wouldn’t dare admit he thought you were cuter though. 
Smiling at how adorable the blushing boy was, you spoke first “There’s a cat cafe down the street from here...they have an arcade area too, want to go check it out?” you asked.
Interest suddenly increasing, Kenma looked up at you smiling slightly. “That sounds like a great idea to me.”
Walking side by side, you smiled to yourself. This was a great idea. “Hey Kenma. I bet I’ll beat you in the racing game!”
“No you won’t.”
“Will too!”
“...will not.” 
The cafe’s owner knew that she had two new special regulars walking into her shop the day a cute pony tailed girl in a dress and converse shoes, and a quiet pudding headed local volleyball player, came speed walking into her cafe bee-lining it to the racing game in the back of her shop. From that day on, and almost every day after that she watched those two grow closer and closer together. Very special indeed, that was confirmed on the day they came into the shop hand in hand, still set on beating each other, or tag teaming other players that entered her cafe. No one ever stood a chance against those two, and that seemed to be how they liked it.    
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jedimaesteryoda · 5 years
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#MeToo in A Song of Ice and Fire
A Song of Ice and Fire has become one of the most popular and highly acclaimed fantasy series today. Martin’s magnum opus fits in the pantheon of high-fantasy alongside Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and Jordan’s Wheel of Time.
It became increasingly popularized after it was adapted into the award winning series on HBO “Game of Thrones.” What helped to make the book series unique when compared to other high-fantasy stories was its deconstructive nature. Viewers of the show note its showing of nudity and gore, which one usually doesn’t see in fantasy on-screen. Many fantasy writers who set their books in a medieval setting, Tolkien included, portray medieval society as idealized and harmonious, but Martin chooses to display some of the harsh realities of a medieval world from the injustices of a society with a rigid class structure to the brutal realities of warfare with atrocities committed by both sides. For all intents and purposes, I am going to be focusing on the book series, and not the show based off it.
The subject I am going to focus on is how the series relates to #MeToo. #MeToo was originally a movement found by social activist and community organizer, Tarana Burke, in 2006 that promoted “empowerment through empathy” among women in underprivileged communities of color who suffered sexual abuse. Tarana was inspired to use the term after a 13 year-old girl confided in her that she had been sexually assaulted, and Tarana had been unable to respond, wishing she had replied simply “Me too.” In 2017, actress Alyssa Milano used the hashtag to spread awareness about sexual harassment and assault during the time victims of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weintein’s sexual abuse started coming out. The hashtag exploded with women coming with their stories of sexual harassment and assault both online and in public. A number of powerful male figures ended up getting outed by the victims of their sexual indiscretions from Hollywood stars and media moguls to politicians and Supreme Court Justice nominees.
I know at first glance for people who just see the show, #MeToo sounds like a weird subject given the amount of sex and cases of sexual assault on-screen (I blame Benioff and Weiss for scenes like Jaime and Cersei in the sept) and some in the text. However, numerous female characters, including point-of-view (POV) characters, are subject to moments that would fit in with #MeToo. The reader gets to see the threats faced by women in a highly patriarchal, restrictive society across age and class lines, and see how instructive it can be with regards to sexual abuse cases in real-life. There are plenty of cases in the series, but I am going to focus on a few. 
Sansa Stark
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Let us start with the POV character Sansa Stark, especially since the iconic phrase “Me Too” was inspired by the sexual abuse of a young girl. Sansa starts the series as a naïve, eleven year-old girl, who like many girls her age, even in the real world, has dreams of romance and lives in a dream world. She is in love with her betrothed, Joffrey, and has a rivalry with her less-than-conventional sister, Arya. However, her dream world later turns into a nightmare world with Cersei initiating a coup, and her betrothed beheading her father, and having her beaten when she displeases him. Throughout the series, Sansa suffers from numerous acts of sexual harassment, sexual assault and attempts at sexual assault.
As father of the realm, Joffrey took the place of Lord Eddard Stark. Sansa stood stiff as a lance as his hands came over her shoulders to fumble with the clasp of her cloak. One of them brushed her breast and lingered to give it a little squeeze.
-A Storm of Swords, Sansa III
"A king can have other women. Whores. My father did. One of the Aegons did too. The third one, or the fourth. He had lots of whores and lots of bastards." As they whirled to the music, Joff gave her a moist kiss. "My uncle will bring you to my bed whenever I command it."
Sansa shook her head. "He won't."
"He will, or I'll have his head. That King Aegon, he had any woman he wanted, whether they were married or no."
-A Storm of Swords, Sansa III
"Don't be sad, Sansa, once I've gotten Queen Margaery with child I'll visit your bedchamber and show my little uncle how it's done."
-A Storm of Swords, Sansa IV
When Joffrey is unclasping her cloak for her wedding, he takes the opportunity to grope her. When they dance, he forces a kiss on her, and tells her that he would make her his whore. Essentially, he tells her that he plans to not simply sleep with, but rape her whenever he wished. He also makes rape jokes in public to Sansa’s face. Sansa doesn’t retaliate or reprimand him for an obvious reason: he has his Kingsguard beat her whenever she opened her mouth against him or displeased him. Another reason is the same reason no one else present in those situations reprimands him: because he is the king, the head of state, one of the most powerful people in the Seven Kingdoms. However, he is also still a minor under Westerosi laws, and until he comes of age, governance is given to two people: the Regent and the Hand of the King. The Hand, his grandfather Lord Tywin Lannister, has a fearsome reputation that discourages others from reprimanding his grandson for his behavior, and the same could be said for the Queen Regent, his mother Cersei, who would never approve of people reprimanding her son in any way. Neither of the two adults who could reprimand Joffrey really care about Sansa either. Sansa on the other hand has no power as a ward and hostage, or rather prisoner, in the royal court of King’s Landing. None of the adults are willing to help her with the only exception being Tyrion. Essentially, Sansa has little to no protection from Joffrey’s unwanted sexual indiscretions.
Sansa is later rescued from King’s Landing, and is taken to the Vale in hiding by Lord Petyr Baelish, also known as Littlefinger. While no longer having to put up with Joffrey’s sexual indiscretions, Sansa isn’t any safer with Baelish.
"I told you that nothing could please me more than to help you with your castle. I fear that was a lie as well. Something else would please me more." He stepped closer. "This."
Sansa tried to step back, but he pulled her into his arms and suddenly he was kissing her. Feebly, she tried to squirm, but only succeeded in pressing herself more tightly against him. His mouth was on hers, swallowing her words. He tasted of mint. For half a heartbeat she yielded to his kiss . . . before she turned her face away and wrenched free. "What are you doing?"
Petyr straightened his cloak. "Kissing a snow maid."
-A Storm of Swords, Sansa VII
"I did not expect you back so soon," she said. "I am glad you've come."
"I would never have known it from the kiss you gave me." He pulled her closer, caught her face between his hands, and kissed her on the lips for a long time. "Now that's the sort of kiss that says welcome home. See that you do better next time."
"Yes, Father." She could feel herself blushing.
-A Feast for Crows, Alayne II
Petyr, a man aged in his late thirties, forces a kiss on a thirteen year-old girl more than once. The first time she made it clear to him she didn’t like it, and he continues in spite of it. He is Lord Protector of the Vale with the household of the Eyrie under his control, and she has hardly any friends at court. I’m not even mentioning that he is essentially sexually grooming her throughout their relationship. Sexual grooming is the practice where an adult influences a child so they can be able to draw them into a sexual relationship. There are six stages according to forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Welner.
Stage 1: Targeting the victim
The offender targets a victim by sizing up the child's vulnerability—emotional neediness, isolation and lower self-confidence. Children with less parental oversight are more desirable prey. Petyr clearly targeted Sansa since they met. Sansa loses her father, her mother is far away and later dies, had her only friend Jeyne taken from her. She is isolated at the Red Keep with no real friends, and the constant abuse from the Lannister family lowered her own self-confidence.
Stage 2: Gaining the victim's trust
The sex offender gains trust by watching and gathering information about the child, getting to know his needs and how to fill them. In this regard, sex offenders mix effortlessly with responsible caretakers. Petyr knows that Sansa is a romantic, and fond of chivalrous knights and uses Ser Dontos as a go-between under the guise of one. Petyr is a member of the Lannisters’ small council, who are her guardians for the first three books.
Stage 3: Filling a need
Once the sex offender begins to fill the child's needs, that adult may assume noticeably more importance in the child's life and may become idealized. Gifts, extra attention, affection may distinguish one adult in particular. Petyr knows that Sansa wants a knight who will protect her, and so uses Ser Dontos to pretend to help her, acting as a “true knight.” He also acts as her protector and savior, taking her away from King’s Landing, and hiding her from the Lannisters. He acts as her guardian as well, knowing she lost her father.
Stage 4: Isolating the child
The grooming sex offender uses the developing special relationship with the child to create situations in which they are alone together. This isolation further reinforces a special connection. Petyr takes her away from King’s Landing to a ship where they share a small cabin, his tower that he rules, and later the Eyrie. As the Lord Protector of the Vale, the Eyrie is under his control.
Stage 5: Sexualizing the relationship
At a stage of sufficient emotional dependence and trust, the offender progressively sexualizes the relationship. Desensitization occurs through talking, pictures, even creating situations in which both offender and victim are naked. When teaching a child, the grooming sex offender has the opportunity to shape the child's sexual preferences and can manipulate what a child finds exciting and extend the relationship in this way. The child comes to see her/himself as a more sexual being and to define the relationship with the offender in more sexual and special terms.
Petyr kisses Sansa in the godswood, and later, kisses her again when they are at the Gates of the Moon. When teaching her about relationships, he also tells her that “young girls were always happiest with older men. ‘Innocence and experience make for a perfect marriage.’”
Stage 6: Maintaining control
Once the sex abuse is occurring, offenders commonly use secrecy and blame to maintain the child's continued participation and silence, particularly because the sexual activity may cause the child to withdraw from the relationship. Children in these entangled relationships confront threats to blame them, to end the relationship and to end the emotional and material needs they associate with the relationship. The child may feel that the loss of the relationship and the consequences of exposing it will humiliate and render them even more unwanted.
Petyr maintains Sansa’s silence through the fact he is providing her a place to hide and protection. If she wanted to run away, where would she go? She is a fugitive wanted for regicide with a large reward posted for her capture, and Petyr’s plan made her an accessory to regicide. Her home of Winterfell is burned and all her family believed dead with the North having come under the rule of the Boltons who are backed by the Lannisters. The need for protection he provides and the potential loss of a sanctuary or place to call home is her reason for not leaving. She was also present when Petyr pushed Lysa out the moon door to her death, again, making her an accessory to murder. Though, he likely won’t, he could always threaten to turn her over to the Lannisters, which would be a death sentence. In other words, Sansa has nowhere else to go, and at Littlefinger’s mercy. She can’t appeal to anyone to stop his acts of sexual assault.
Of course, Petyr wasn’t the first person in the Vale to make unwanted sexual advances to Sansa, that dishonor goes to a singer named Marillion.
"Alayne." Her aunt's singer stood over her. "Sweet Alayne. I am Marillion. I saw you come in from the rain. The night is chill and wet. Let me warm you."
The old dog raised his head and growled, but the singer gave him a cuff and sent him slinking off, whimpering.
"Marillion?" she said, uncertain. "You are . . . kind to think of me, but . . . pray forgive me. I am very tired."
"And very beautiful. All night I have been making songs for you in my head. A lay for your eyes, a ballad for your lips, a duet to your breasts. I will not sing them, though. They were poor things, unworthy of such beauty." He sat on her bed and put his hand on her leg. "Let me sing to you with my body instead."
She caught a whiff of his breath. "You're drunk."
"I never get drunk. Mead only makes me merry. I am on fire." His hand slipped up to her thigh. "And you as well."
"Unhand me. You forget yourself."
"Mercy. I have been singing love songs for hours. My blood is stirred. And yours, I know . . . there's no wench half so lusty as one bastard born. Are you wet for me?"
"I'm a maiden," she protested.
"Truly? Oh, Alayne, Alayne, my fair maid, give me the gift of your innocence. You will thank the gods you did. I'll have you singing louder than the Lady Lysa."
Sansa jerked away from him, frightened. "If you don't leave me, my au—my father will hang you. Lord Petyr."
"Littlefinger?" He chuckled. "Lady Lysa loves me well, and I am Lord Robert's favorite. If your father offends me, I will destroy him with a verse." He put a hand on her breast, and squeezed. "Let's get you out of these wet clothes. You wouldn't want them ripped, I know. Come, sweet lady, heed your heart—"
-A Storm of Swords, Sansa VI
Let’s go through what happened step-by-step. He starts by coming onto her in a creepy, no-so-subtle way, and she replies that she’s tired, basically signaling that she isn’t interested. He then directly propositions her, and responds by inappropriately touching her leg. He then gropes her thigh, which alone is an act of sexual assault. She responds by telling him to stop, and he acts like he doesn’t care. She protests that she is a virgin, and he continues to press, saying that she would like it if she lost her virginity to him. Desperate, she then resorts to threatening him as a way to get him to stop, saying he would be hanged if he tried to force himself on her. He responds by saying that his patrons are the ruling Lady and the young Lord of the Eyrie who hold him high in their esteem, protecting him from punishment and retribution by her father. He then escalates by groping her breast, and is clearly intending to rape her. He doesn’t see it that way; like so many rapists, he is telling himself as well as her that in spite of what she says, she actually wants it and she would like it. It was only Ser Lothor Brune’s intervention that stopped him. Of course, Brune’s protection is selective as he isn’t able to stop Littlefinger’s advances given Littlefinger is his employer, and only protected Sansa that night on Littlefinger’s orders.
Sansa found herself in situations many girls unfortunately find themselves in. Many young girls have been preyed upon by older male figures who have charge over them from male guardians to schoolteachers. The younger they are, the more vulnerable they are, and the more easily they can be threatened and manipulated into staying silent regarding their abuse. Sexual grooming contains one of the largest power imbalances since it is between an adult and a child. There are plenty of cases: serial predator Robert Kelly and Aaliyah (27 and 15 respectively), President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Bridgette (15 and 40, she was his high school teacher) and Jerry Lee Lewis and his cousin, Myra Brown (23 and 13, she still believed in Santa Claus).
Let’s look at the issue in the case of an older, more powerful woman.
Cersei Lannister
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Cersei is a POV character by the fourth book, and isn’t a character one would usually call sympathetic. She is narcissistic, cruel and abusive with no qualms about killing innocents, even children. She even went so far as to have Sansa’s direwolf killed for something her sister’s direwolf did. We know that she hated her royal husband, Robert, as he was blatantly unfaithful, not even keeping his affairs discrete, and on their wedding knight he whispered his late betrothed’s name into her ear. However, we later learned of another reason she had to hate him.
use her as a man would use her, the way Robert would use her when the drink was in him, and she was unable to bring him off with hand or mouth.
Those had been the worst nights, lying helpless underneath him as he took his pleasure, stinking of wine and grunting like a boar. Usually he rolled off and went to sleep as soon as it was done, and was snoring before his seed could dry upon her thighs. She was always sore afterward, raw between the legs, her breasts painful from the mauling he would give them. The only time he'd ever made her wet was on their wedding night  . . . For Robert, those nights never happened. Come morning he remembered nothing, or so he would have had her believe. Once, during the first year of their marriage, Cersei had voiced her displeasure the next day. "You hurt me," she complained. He had the grace to look ashamed. "It was not me, my lady," he said in a sulky sullen tone, like a child caught stealing apple cakes from the kitchen. "It was the wine. I drink too much wine." To wash down his admission, he reached for his horn of ale. As he raised it to his mouth, she smashed her own horn in his face, so hard she chipped a tooth. Years later at a feast, she heard him telling a serving wench how he'd cracked the tooth in a mêlée. Well, our marriage was a mêlée, she reflected, so he did not lie.
The rest had all been lies, though. He did remember what he did to her at night, she was convinced of that. She could see it in his eyes. He only pretended to forget; it was easier to do that than to face his shame. Deep down Robert Baratheon was a coward. In time the assaults did grow less frequent. During the first year he took her at least once a fortnight; by the end it was not even once a year. He never stopped completely, though. Sooner or later there would always come a night when he would drink too much and want to claim his rights. What shamed him in the light of day gave him pleasure in the darkness.
-A Feast for Crows, Cersei VII
Robert was an alcoholic, and there were times when he got drunk and then forced himself on his wife. The first year of their marriage was marked by Robert’s marital rapes at a frightening frequency of once a fortnight or every two weeks. She couldn’t divorce him, since this is a society where the concept of divorce doesn’t exist, and annulment was also out of the question since neither her husband nor father would allow it. Robert was also king, and being the ultimate authority she couldn’t have him arrested. She didn’t turn to her father given even though he was one of the most powerful lords in Westeros, he was on the other side of the continent, and even so, he had arranged the marriage, and was more concerned with his grandchildren sitting the Iron Throne and the glory of his house than his daughter. She didn’t tell her brother Jaime either given she knew he would respond by trying to kill Robert and that would mean Jaime would die as well.
Even being a powerful figure like the Queen of Westeros who was the daughter of a powerful lord, and the sister of the best swordsman in the Seven Kingdoms couldn’t protect her from the dangers of rape. Essentially, she was trapped in her abusive marriage. The only way out was by murdering her husband (admittedly not the only reason she had Robert killed, there were clearly other reasons as well).
"Please. Have you given any thought to what Joffrey will do when I tell him you murdered his father to bed his mother?"
"It was not like that!" Lancel protested, horrified.
"No? What was it like, pray?"
"The queen gave me the strongwine! Your own father Lord Tywin, when I was named the king's squire, he told me to obey her in everything."
"Did he tell you to fuck her too?" Look at him. Not quite so tall, his features not so fine, and his hair is sand instead of spun gold, yet still . . . even a poor copy of Jaime is sweeter than an empty bed, I suppose. "No, I thought not."
"I never meant . . . I only did as I was bid, I . . ."
-A Clash of Kings, Tyrion VII
"Did you force her [Cersei]?"
"No! I [Lancel] loved her. I wanted to protect her."
-A Feast for Crows, Jaime IV
Cersei’s relationship with sexual abuse is made complicated by the fact the she abused her position as queen to take advantage of her teenaged cousin and Robert’s squire, Lancel. She proves to be a victimizer as well as victim. It is something not as commonly seen, as it is usually a powerful man using his power over a woman below him in the power structure, but there are cases where the genders in this situation are reversed. Lancel was consenting, but he was no older than sixteen and he was very inexperienced as opposed to Cersei, a woman in her thirties who has more experience. This is shown is his comments on their relationship in A Feast for Crows, where Lancel says that he “loved her” and “wanted to protect her.” Those aren’t the words of a mature man, but a vulnerable, inexperienced teenage boy. She slept with him for both sexual gratification, and as a way to manipulate him into being her pawn, exchanging sex for loyalty. In this world, it would be a clear case of statutory rape, but even if one overlooks the fact that sixteen is considered the age of maturity in Westeros, she is also guilty of professional exploitation and workplace harassment. A CEO would risking losing his position if he did that with an intern, and with one US President, Bill Clinton, it got him impeached.
We saw a similar case in the real-world with Asia Argento, herself one of Harvey Weinstein’s victims, being accused by a young actor, Jimmy Bennett, of sexual assaulting him in a hotel room when he was 17 years-old.
It’s not the only time Cersei commits sexual assault.
She wondered what it would feel like to suckle on those breasts, to lay the Myrish woman on her back and push her legs apart and use her as a man would use her, the way Robert would use her when the drink was in him, and she was unable to bring him off with hand or mouth.
Those had been the worst nights, lying helpless underneath him as he took his pleasure, stinking of wine and grunting like a boar. Usually he rolled off and went to sleep as soon as it was done, and was snoring before his seed could dry upon her thighs. She was always sore afterward, raw between the legs, her breasts painful from the mauling he would give them. The only time he'd ever made her wet was on their wedding night.
 . . . 
Cersei cupped the other woman's breast. Softly at first, hardly touching, feeling the warmth of it beneath her palm, the skin as smooth as satin. She gave it a gentle squeeze, then ran her thumbnail lightly across the big dark nipple, back and forth and back and forth until she felt it stiffen. When she glanced up, Taena's eyes were open. "Does that feel good?" she asked.
"Yes," said Lady Merryweather.
"And this?" Cersei pinched the nipple now, pulling on it hard, twisting it between her fingers.
The Myrish woman gave a gasp of pain. "You're hurting me." "It's just the wine. I had a flagon with my supper, and another with the widow Stokeworth. I had to drink to keep her calm." She twisted Taena's other nipple too, pulling until the other woman gasped. "I am the queen. I mean to claim my rights."
"Do what you will." Taena's hair was as black as Robert's, even down between her legs, and when Cersei touched her there she found her hair all sopping wet, where Robert's had been coarse and dry. "Please," the Myrish woman said, "go on, my queen. Do as you will with me. I'm yours."
-A Feast for Crows, Cersei VII
Cersei in this scene is intent on re-enacting her assaults at the hands of Robert, only this time she is the victimizer. One can clearly see this with the line “I am the queen. I mean to claim my rights,” and blame her actions on “just the wine,” using the same terminology she used to describe Robert’s rapes as well as Robert’s excuses for the rapes. She starts when Taena is asleep, and unable to give consent. Taena does give what would appear to be consent when awake, but is she in any position to refuse? Taena had hardly any agency in that situation at all as Cersei clearly wasn’t going to take “no” for an answer, and she is the Queen Regent, the head of government, while Taena is there only at her pleasure. Cersei has Taena’s life and likely that of her family in her hands, and Taena also knows how harsh and unforgiving Cersei can be.  
Cersei’s assault of Taena shows that one doesn’t necessarily need to be a man to engage in harassment, and even women can engage in it against other women. There is a case where HSBC executive Eileen Hedges, a heterosexual married woman who like Cersei rose to a high-powered position in a male-dominated environment, systematically harassed her subordinate, Jill. When Jill threatened to quit, Eileen responded that she had Jill’s career in her hands and could respond by telling her potential employers of her affairs at HSBC, hurting her chances of finding work outside her current job. Behavior like the kind Eileen displayed also happens since the people who witness it are afraid to come forward given they could face retaliation as well.
Being a victim of abuse doesn’t stop her from being an abuser. As someone who hasn’t had much control over her life with her father and husband making choices for her, she gets to be the one in control in this situation, and exercise power over another individual. Sexual assault ultimately is about power with regards to who can perpetrate it against whom.
Instances among the Smallfolk
The two people I’ve mentioned, Sansa and Cersei, are both highborn ladies, the daughters of powerful lords who were Wardens. We so far have talked about sexual assault and harassment only through the experience of members of the upper class. When it comes to smallfolk, they are generally more vulnerable to rape than highborn. Highborn ladies of ruling families have swords to defend their honor as well as chivalry while lowborn women don’t.
"Aye. My mother was a washerwoman at Cider Hall till one of milord's sons raped her. Makes me a sort o' brown apple Fossoway, the way I see it."
-A Dance with Dragons, The Lost Lord
Franklyn Flowers’s mother worked at Cider Hall, and was raped by one of her employers. She likely wasn’t able to press charges against him, given the judge who would be presiding over the case would be her liege, the Knight of Cider Hall, who was her attacker’s father. The other judge she could appeal her case to would be the Fossoways’ liege lord, Lord Tyrell. Both her attacker and his father undoubtedly knew Lord Tyrell personally, and Tyrell likely wouldn’t have wanted to alienate his bannerman by punishing his son. It would have been Fossoway’s word against hers, and there is a good chance Tyrell would have been likely to either dismiss the case or acquit him. The Knight of Cider Hall, by virtue of being her liege, is also her landlord, and her rapist could potentially retaliate by having his father evict her family, leaving them unemployed and homeless. He could also visit her home with some of his castle’s garrison to intimidate them.
Warning Spoilers for The Winds of Winter ahead
“I have not been raped, if that is what you’re asking,” the old woman said. “Some of the serving girls have been less fortunate. Married or unmarried, the men make no distinctions. “
“No one’s been doing any raping,” insisted Young John Mudd. “Connington won’t have that. We follow orders.”
Chain nodded. “Some girls was persuaded, might be.”
“The same way our smallfolk were persuaded to give you all their crops. Melons or maidenheads, it’s all the same to your sort. If you want it, you take it.”
-The Winds of Winter, Arianne II
When the Golden Company occupies Mistwood, Lady Mertyns states that serving girls at the castle are raped by some of the mercenaries. Mudd replies to the accusations of rape by denying them, and Chain does the same by saying they were “persuaded.” Well, how hard would it be for an armed man who won’t take “no” for an answer to persuade a defenseless serving girl? Their attackers are literally armed, and could just force the girls at the point of a sword or a dagger. If the girls tried to have their attackers charged, their case wouldn’t be brought to who would usually be the judge in this case, Lady Mertyns, who would undoubtedly have been sympathetic towards them, but the Golden Company who has the estate under occupation and thus, final authority. The officers in the Golden Company would be the ones hearing the case, and if the comments of the serjeants are anything to go by, it would just be dismissed. That is without saying that the girls, like many victims of rape and sexual assault, would have to deal with the fear of retaliation by their attackers and their cohorts for coming forward.
Conclusion:
With all these #MeToo situations in A Song of Ice and Fire, the factor in common that played a huge role in how sexual abuse was perpetrated and the abusers were able to get away with it was power dynamics. The perpetrators of sexual abuse are either powerful men (or women in Cersei’s case) or protected by powerful individuals and/or institutions whether it be the feudal hierarchy or the Golden Company. In Sansa and Cersei’s cases, their abusers were the most powerful figures in a feudal society: kings. No king has ever been arrested for anything. The smallfolk women were preyed upon by either a well-connected, highborn man like Fossoway or mercenaries serving in the company that controlled the area. Just to give one example in how power dynamics works, in the case of Marillion, Sansa was posing as Petyr’s bastard daughter, Alayne, and in the Vale, as the bastard daughter of the smallest of lords, the singer with the support of House Arryn has more power and influence between the two. However, there is a good chance Marillion wouldn’t have tried it if he knew who she actually was. As the trueborn daughter of House Stark and (supposed) heiress to Winterfell as well as niece and cousin to the Lady and Lord of the Eyrie respectively, the power dynamic shifts in her favor.
This is a pattern we can often see in the real world, especially in situations of workplace abuse. Serial abuser Harvey Weinstein was protected by his status as a powerful Hollywood mogul with high-profile connections going as far as the Clintons while the women he preyed upon were generally young actresses whose careers he could threaten. Roger Ailes was the Chairman and CEO of Fox News and Fox News Television Stations where news anchors like Gretchen Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Andrea Tantaros worked (all of whom were harassed by him). Sexual abuse and harassment is very much about power, as in many cases, the abusers have the connections and status to shield them from potential consequences for their actions while the abused are usually deficient in these things when compared to their abusers. It is often perpetrated by powerful individuals against their subordinates, people below them in the corporate hierarchy. The victims are almost never people above the abusers in the corporate hierarchy who could potentially threaten their careers. And like in Westeros, heads of state in the modern world have been abusers, including US Presidents. 
The women in the book series were afraid to come forward out of not just the fear of their claims being dismissed by authority figures, but potential retaliation from their attackers and their associates best exemplified by Sansa knowing she would be beaten by Joffrey’s Kingsguard if she did. Tantaros complained about Ailes’s sexual harassment to executives, and it only resulted in her facing retaliation by being demoted and then taken off the air. Eliza Dushku confronted her “Bull” show co-star and lead, Michael Weatherly, over his uncomfortable behavior such as comments about her appearance, a rape joke and a comment on a threesome. It ended up in her character being written off the show and her being fired. Danielle Hartley, who worked as an assistant to Larry Wallace, senior aide for then California Attorney General Kamala Harris, accused him of sexual harassment only to be transferred to another department. Weinstein threatened a number of his victims that he could use his connections and clout as a Hollywood mogul to prevent them from finding work in Hollywood along with threats of violence. People who witness it are afraid to come forward as well. One employee in the HSBC harassment case, Mike Picarella, came forward (anonymously) to protect Jill from Eileen’s harassment, and it just resulted in the executives, looking out for one of their own, destroying his career. He not only lost his job at the bank, but was practically blacklisted from the industry with him having trouble finding work in his field, not even able to get a job as an operations manager at a retirement home.
In short, while the medieval Westeros and modern-day real world are two completely different settings with regards to technological advancement, society and forms of government, both suffer from some of the same shortcomings. They are patriarchal societies where sexual abuse is commonplace, and in too many cases, tolerated. People (mostly men) take advantage of power imbalances to target others for sexual harassment and abuse, relying on their position, wealth and/or connections for protection.
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bbclesmis · 5 years
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Sydney Morning Herald: Lily Collins on outshining dad Phil and her new blockbuster role
Lily Collins is in a good place right now, the best place, perhaps, in her quietly glittering career. The British-American actor, 29, has the sort of resumé – movie star, fashion icon, proper published author – that might make her an object of envy were she not so grounded, so very relatable. But it's her forthcoming, wildly praised role as Fantine, that oh-so-tragic young factory worker, in a six-part BBC adaptation of Victor Hugo's famed 1862 novel, Les Misérables, that looks set to send her stratospheric.
"It's a role I've been preparing for all my life," says Lily, hazel eyes dancing under big, beautiful brows. "I mean, I read the book at school" – that's Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles – "but if I had known I was going to play Fantine one day, I would definitely have paid more attention!"
“It’s the things that make you different that end up making you unique.”
She gives a smile. "Fantine drives the story at the beginning and her essence and memory continue throughout the series. To me she represents everlasting hope in times of darkness, no matter what the time period."
There have been several versions of Les Misérables, of course, the most famous being the musical that is still playing on Broadway and in London's West End, and the similarly sung-through 2012 movie starring Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe, with Anne Hathaway as Fantine.
A sweet-natured grisette (young, working-class Frenchwoman), Fantine's seduction by an older student, the charming cad Felix (Johnny Flynn in the BBC series), results in her falling pregnant and struggling to survive as a single mother. Conned by her child's carers, destitute and desperate, she falls on hard times. Fantine is an iconic character, and one that miniseries director Tom Shankland encouraged Lily to make her own.
"Tom told me to forget every other Les Mis I'd seen and just go back to the writing," says Lily of this song-free version, scripted by Andrew Davies (who wrote the US version of House of Cards) and is delivered in plain-spoken, vowel-dropped English despite the epic backdrop of 19th-century France (or Belgium masquerading as France) at a time of civil unrest.
"We were encouraged to bring a fresh take, to breathe life into a song lyric and make it an episode," she continues in her soft American twang. "Not everybody loves musicals. So where Fantine has a line in one of her songs that mentions her falling in love, now we get to see how it happened."
Lily is here at BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) in central London for the premiere of Les Misérables, the cast of which includes David Oyelowo, Dominic West and Olivia Colman. It's raining outside, but Lily – standing reed-slim in an ultra-tight sparkling minidress ("It's going to be tricky for me to sit down") – oozes the sunniness of California, where she has been based since the age of five, having moved there from England following her parents' divorce. The daughter of former Genesis drummer (and later singer) Phil Collins and his American second wife, Jill Tavelman, Lily might easily have fast-tracked her ascent by trading on her surname.
She hasn't, which makes her success all the sweeter. "I am super proud of my dad," she has said of her hit-maker father, who has five children by his three ex-wives (and who recently toured Australia). "But I wanted to do it on my own. People assume it's easier when you have that name but if you're the kind of person who doesn't want to use it, it's a lot harder."
Nevertheless, from her first on-screen appearance, aged two, in a BBC series called Growing Pains, Lily's rise seems to have been remarkably smooth. Performing is in her blood, after all: as a young girl she'd watch old Hollywood films, many featuring her maternal grandmother Jane Hale, a ballerina and actress, then dress up to mimic her favourite characters.
She attended the Youth Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles, taking part in musical theatre productions. She was also a teen columnist for UK magazine Elle Girl, and a socialite whose alabaster beauty caught the eye of Chanel, which dressed her in a gown for a debutante ball that featured in the reality TV show The Hills.
By 2008, Lily was in demand as a model and brand ambassador (she is currently the face of French beauty brand Lancôme) and making a name as a red-carpet correspondent and children's TV presenter. A year later, she featured as a minor character in the American teen drama series 90210 and made her film debut as Sandra Bullock's daughter in the Oscar-nominated The Blind Side.
The scripts started tumbling in, and Lily dropped out of studying broadcast journalism to take supporting roles in an action film and a thriller. In 2012, she starred in Mirror Mirror as a sword-wielding Snow White opposite Julia Roberts' evil queen.
"So Fantine is not the first time I've played a literary character with opinions," grins Lily, who lobbied for a second audition for Snow White after being unhappy with her first try-out, duly clinching the part.
"I wanted to do it on my own. People assume it's easier when you have that name but if you're the kind of person who doesn't want to use it, it's a lot harder."
There's also been sci-fi (The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones), throwback romantic-comedy drama (Warren Beatty's Rules Don't Apply, which got her a Golden Globe nomination), and the CGI-enhanced Okja, in which she played a young animal activist intent on saving her best (four-legged) friend.
And there was a lead role in the controversial anorexia drama To the Bone. It divided critics but Lily has insisted that it helped her understand her own teenage battle with eating disorders, which she detailed in her 2017 memoir, Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me.
"It's very rare you get the opportunity to wear shoes you once wore with a different perspective on things," she told Vanity Fair. "This was an amazing opportunity to gain knowledge, and helped me let go a lot."
As did the writing of Unfiltered. Divulging personal information in print is one thing. Doing so when you have a famous dad and 13 million Instagram followers is another. Lily – who wrote every word herself – says she found the process liberating.
"I decided to write the book because I kept reading what people were posting on social media and thinking, 'You're so brave,' " she says. "It was a really difficult thing for me to do, but the feedback I got made it way more rewarding than I expected."
Boyfriends' names were changed in an essay on dating (if rumoured exes Zac Efron and Chris Evans are in there, she's not saying). Silliness is praised as attractive; those eyebrows, which she plucked to thin lines at school, are reclaimed and championed in all their bushy glory. And in an open letter to her father, Lily tells the 67-year-old that she "forgives" him for "not being the dad I expected", and notes the impact that her parents' famously messy divorce had on her teenage years: "I accept and honour the sadness and anger I felt towards the things you did or didn't do," she writes.
Today she'd prefer not to discuss specifics, though offers You'll Be in My Heart from the 1999 Disney animated film Tarzan when asked to choose her favourite Phil Collins song: "He wrote it as a lullaby to me as a kid," she says, re-routing the conversation to Unfiltered and the main reason she set fingers to laptop: to make young people feel less alone. The sentiment dovetails with Lily's advocacy work for charities including Bystander Revolution, an anti-bullying organisation, and the GO Campaign, which raises funds for orphans and vulnerable children.
"Open communication with teenagers is something I'm very passionate about," she says. "Speaking about insecurities and being honest about what you are going through is vital. One young woman asked me, 'But what if you know you're born different, if your quirks and interests aren't the norm? When you're a green apple when everyone else is a red one?'
"I said, 'Well, I've always loved green apples! It's the things that make you different that end up making you unique.' " She pauses for a beat. "So many kids have these deep, thoughtful questions. It doesn't matter what political, religious, sexual-orientation background you come from, we all go through the same insecurities and realising this fact is the beauty of communications."
"It's very rare you get the opportunity to wear shoes you once wore with a different perspective on things"
Additionally, by setting her own example – by putting it all out there in Unfiltered – Lily was able to let go of personal baggage, which in turn allowed her to go deeper into her characters. Forthcoming appearances include two extremes: Edith Bratt, beloved wife and muse of English writer J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, in the biopic Tolkien, and Liz Kendall, longtime girlfriend of infamous American serial killer Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.
"I'd just finished filming that when I jumped on a plane and flew to Brussels in winter to start Les Mis," says Lily. "My state of mind was already very dark, so when I found we were working backwards, that the end of Fantine's life was being filmed on day two of shooting, I used this weird head space to help me lean into her character."
Lily portrays Fantine, a fallen woman who sells her hair, then her teeth, then her body to earn money for her daughter, with a deft mix of steeliness, sassiness and grace. Much of the filming took place in sub-zero conditions; one memorable scene sees a shivering Fantine being physically hurled across cobblestones by police inspector Javert: "David [Oyelowo] got a bit carried away, and there were real bruises afterwards," says Lily with a grimace. "I thought, 'Well she's physically in pain, let's keep going.'
"I've never shot anything out of sequence like that but I'm so grateful because when we returned in the summer, knowing where we ended up, I got to amp up the romance. I wanted people to empathise with her as much as possible."
She flashes a smile. "Empathy," she says, "is everything."
Les Misérables premieres on BBC First on Foxtel and Fetch from March 10 at 8.30pm.
This article appears in Sunday Life magazine within the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age on sale February 17.
https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/lily-collins-on-outshining-dad-phil-and-her-new-blockbuster-role-20190213-p50xf1.html
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thecostumeplot · 3 years
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Episode 21: Walk the Line & The Impossible
Both  
Welcome to The Costume Plot.
Jojo
I'm Jojo Siu.
Sarah  
And I’m Sarah Timm. We're professional designers with a passion for costume design and the performing arts. Our podcast does contain spoilers. Accompanying slideshows for each movie are linked in the episode description.
Jojo
We hope you'll join us every other week as we delve into the wonderful world of costume design in The Costume Plot. [music]
Sarah  
Hello!
Jojo  
Hello, welcome back.
Sarah  
How's it going?
Jojo  
Yay. We actually recorded more often this month, and I still feel like it's been forever. [both laugh]
Sarah  
I know! We're curring it fine again, too, where we're not that long from release. But that's okay. We have time. It's great. Here we are. We made it.
Jojo  
Sorry. It's been a busy month.
Sarah  
Jojo's had a lot going on. But we're glad. I'm glad you've made it. Here you are.
Jojo  
Thanks. Still surviving somehow. [laughs]
Sarah  
Yeah. So I have a thing that I want to talk about at the top of the show today. It's a little bit of self promotion. So I hope our listeners are okay with that. I am competing in the Her Universe Fashion Show, as you guys might know. And it's virtual this year, and there is an audience vote. [editor's note: Votes are now closed! I didn't win!] So I'm campaigning for votes right now! I need your vote. [laughs]
Jojo  
Yay!
Sarah  
If I win, if I win, I get the chance to design a line with Her Universe that gets sold in Hot Topic. So it's a really big deal. My look is "Hamilton"-inspired. And if you listen to the show, you know I am a big fan of "Hamilton".
Jojo  
Yes.
Sarah  
I'm really proud of it. And I got to shoot in a theater, like an abandoned theater, from the 20s. So like, I'm just so excited. So all the links that I have so far will be in the description of this episode. We haven't given been giving a lot information. It's on... I'll back up. It's on July 23. [laughs] At 5pm pacific time.
Jojo  
Very important.
Sarah  
Yeah, that's the important information. And it's part of Comic-Con@Home, San Diego Comic Con. And so we don't have any specific links for where to watch it yet. But I do have a link that will hopefully be updated as the info gets released. And then that will hopefully also have voting stuff. But yes, please watch. And then please vote for me, if you like my look.
Jojo  
Yay! Definitely vote for Sarah.
Sarah  
Thank you so much.
Jojo  
I'm so excited to see it in person.
Sarah  
I'm so excited too.
Jojo  
I've only been seeing snippets of it.
Sarah  
I know. If you follow me on social media, I've been trying my best to kind of like build some suspense. I made a little trailer in iMovie. I'm doing the thing.
Jojo  
I saw that. I love it.
Sarah  
I'm working hard on trying to get people interested, because I mean... more power to them, but I'm competing against some people who have multiple thousands of followers. Like, 25-100k. So I gotta find a way to stand out, you know, when I don't have that big of a fan base.
Jojo  
Mmhmm. Right.
Sarah  
Which, like, I'm excited for them that they have that. I just don't.
Jojo  
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Sarah  
So.
Jojo  
We'll get there eventually.
Sarah  
I mean, maybe I'll win and then I'll be... my followers will just "whoosh!"... through the roof.
Jojo  
That would be great.
Sarah  
So then I'm Instagram famous. [both laugh] Okay. Yeah.
Jojo  
Perfect. Onto our theme!
Sarah  
Our theme this week! I'm going first this week, our theme is... are we calling this "based on real life events"? Is that what we're...?
Jojo  
I think so. I think that's what we ended up deciding, like, based on true events.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
And however loosely that is, that is true.
Sarah  
Yeah. So real people or real historical events. So I chose "Walk the Line". Because I'm not usually a biopic person. I often find them to be a little bit... I don't wanna say "heavy handed," but it's sort of like they're always sort of Oscar-bait movies. And they're really melodramatic sometimes, but I really like "Walk the Line". And I'm not even a giant Johnny Cash fan. I just love this movie.
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
I think I also just really love Reese Witherspoon. So that helps a lot. She's...
Jojo  
She's pretty great.
Sarah  
...one of my faves. Okay, so I'll just dive in. It was released in 2005. So I was like, you know... it still feels like a very current movie to me, but it's very much not. Because that was...
Jojo  
I know, I forget how far away 2005 was. Like, that really wasn't that long ago, but...
Sarah  
Once again, just facing our own mortality on this show. Going, "What? ...Okay."
Jojo  
How have we passed this many years already?
Sarah  
[laughs] Exactly. It was directed by James Mangold, who is a very prolific director. He's done "Logan," "Ford v. Ferrari," "3:10 to Yuma," "Girl, Interrupted," and he's also a producer. So he produced "Greatest Showman," lots of blockbuster movies. And the costumes were designed by Arianne Phillips, who works a lot with James Mangold. So she designed a lot of those movies that I just mentioned, in addition to "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," "Kingsman: The Golden Circle," "Nocturnal Animals," which I heard is not a very good movie, but the costumes are great. [laughs]
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
And then she also has a really long-standing working relationship with Madonna. So she has styled basically everything Madonna has done, like in the last...
Jojo  
That's amazing.
Sarah  
...decade, at least. So, good for her. That's great.
Jojo  
Yeah, exactly.
Sarah  
Oh, and she also did a couple of really iconic movies that I haven't even seen. But if I can... I can imagine the looks from them. So those are "Tank Girl" and "The Crow". And I'm like...
Jojo  
[gasps] Ooooh.
Sarah  
...I know both of those visually, even though I haven't seen them.
Jojo  
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sarah  
So she's done a lot of great work.
Jojo  
Mmhmm.
Sarah  
She has been nominated for three Oscars, one for "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," one for "W.E.,", which makes sense, because didn't Madonna direct that?
Jojo  
I think so.
Sarah  
And then this movie. And she has not won an Oscar yet, but she probably will eventually.
Jojo  
Mmhmm.
Sarah  
And she has been nominated for a lot of Costume Designers' Guild Awards, and she won one for "W.E.". And then she also has a Tony for "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" on Broadway, because I think she did the movie as well.
Jojo  
Oh yeah, I forgot she did that one. Yeah.
Sarah  
Yeah. So it's cool... I like when-- it happened with my movie last week, too, where the designers also got to design the stage adaptation of the movie that they designed. I think that's cool. Okay, so the movie itself was in part based on two autobiographies, "Man in Black" from 1975, and "Cash: the Autobiography" from 1997. Although they say that the film goes deeper into some painful sort of subjects that Johnny Cash himself didn't really dive into in those books.
Jojo  
Mmhmm.
Sarah  
I don't really have any other like background on the movie itself. I think they were trying to get it made for a really long time. And it just like, finally happened in 2005. So let me share my screen. I have a lot of pictures this week. So I think that, you know, I'll obviously put all of them on Pinterest, but I might have to weed out a few for Instagram, or I might have to do two posts, we'll kind of see how I feel.
Jojo  
Mmhmm.
Sarah  
Partly because I have some real life pictures, as you can see, to compare to the movie.
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
And then also because we go through, like, three decades. We go from the 40s through to the late 60s. So there's a lot of periods being represented.
Jojo  
A lot of period wear.
Sarah  
I don't know why put this one first. That doesn't go first. That's not it. [both laugh] That one's first. Okay, so we open in 1944. I mean, basically, the story of this movie is Johnny Cash's life, which is... he starts growing up in rural Arkansas. And he loses his older brother very young, in a tablesaw accident, which is really sad. And it seems like it informs a lot of his life, and his trauma, throughout the movie.
Jojo  
Mmhmm.
Sarah  
And then he joins the military and gets married. And then he kind of hits it big in music. And then it's basically just about his musical career, and also his struggle with drugs and alcohol. And then also his eventual relationship with June Carter, who he falls in love with when he's already married to his first wife. And he doesn't exactly stay faithful to her. But then he and June...
Jojo  
[laughs] As we well know.
Sarah  
[laughs] Yeah. He and June eventually do get married. And, you know, after the events of this movie, they were married for like 35 years. Until they both passed away. So that's the story. It's Johnny Cash's life. Okay. So here we are in 1940s Arkansas, and I like these sort of first scenes, they're very warm in color, I feel like. Everything looks kind of dusty, but also really hot, you know, and it kind of sets the mood of this. They're very poor. So this is him and his brother, he... Johnny is on the left. And when he's young, he goes by the name JR. And he has a lot of guilt because his brother, he says, is the good son. Basically, his brother wants to be a preacher and is really good at minding his parents and is really helpful, and JR just feels lesser-than, like he's not as good as his brother. So.... Oh, also his dad is abusive. And his dad even says, after his brother dies, he says,  "God took the wrong son," basically.
Jojo  
Mmhmm. Yeah.
Sarah  
So that's gonna really impart some trauma on your child, to say something like that.
Jojo  
Just a little bit.
Sarah  
Just a little bit. Yeah, so this is them going fishing. And their little relationship is so cute, they're clearly very close. And so it's even more heartbreaking that one of them dies. And then this is his mom, who is the one who teaches him to sing and stuff. And this is... oh, I have this, and I was thinking about cutting it, but I have a picture of her later in the movie. So I wanted to compare, you know, her. Because she's not in a lot in the movie. But we see her go through a big change, you know, after Johnny is successful and is probably like, paying for her to have a happy life. A happy, comfortable life later in life.
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
So, yeah... oh... yeah, I put these in a dumb order. Okay, this one. [both laugh] Sometimes I label them wrong.
Jojo  
I do the same thing.
Sarah  
So this is Johnny thing after he goes and serves in Germany. And that's kind of like... not really focused on in the movie. But... this is... he has a job, basically, as a door to door salesman, and he's not doing a very good job at it. So this outfit really says to me a real lack of personality, because he hasn't really found who he is yet. He hasn't found his own identity. He hasn't found even-- he knows that he likes to sing. But he hasn't really let himself think that maybe he could be a successful music artist.
Jojo  
Mmhmm.
Sarah  
And also, when he first tries, when he first starts a band, they do exclusively gospel music. And the radio guy who they meet with is like, "Gospel music doesn't sell anymore. What do you have?" And so he like, on a whim, plays him... the famous song about shooting man in Reno. Can't remember what it's called. [editor's note: "Folsom Prison Blues"]
Jojo  
You're asking the wrong person, I'm so bad with names. [laughs]
Sarah  
I don't know.
Jojo  
I know what you're talking about, though.
Sarah  
I honestly... "I hear a train a-comin'." I don't know. Anyway, I really liked this soundtrack in high school when it came out.
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
I just don't remember the names of the songs. So this is them playing for that radio guy.
Jojo  
Mmm.
Sarah  
And it's not really communicated why he chose black. But black becomes, obviously, his signature color. Maybe it's just like, they all had black in their wardrobe. So they were like, "let's all just wear black."
Jojo  
Right. Pretty standard color.
Sarah  
Yeah. And his wife says, "It looks like you're going to a funeral." And throughout the movie, people tell him that. And he's like, "maybe I am."
Jojo  
[laughs] "Maybe that's exactly what I'm doing."
Sarah  
Let's see. So there's an LA Times article that's an interview with Arianne Phillips, and she says, "You can read a lot into it. Black is a very humble color, and Cash was a working man's man. He was also an outsider who didn't belong to the rock world, or the country world. And there was something shocking at the time about wearing all black. It's what you wore to funerals. So it worked for him on many levels." So he just becomes... he becomes the man in black, you know.
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
This is his wife, Vivian. And I have a lot to say about her.
Jojo  
[laughs]
Sarah  
Because... so she's played by Ginnifer Goodwin, who we can see here, I like this. I really like this pattern of this gingham with the stripe, with the cardigan on top.
Jojo  
Mmhmm.
Sarah  
I pulled it because it's like my favorite look of hers. But I want to talk about stuff that isn't even costume related when it comes to her character. So his wife, Vivian, let's get into it. She was...
Jojo  
[laughs] Let's dive deep.
Sarah  
I'm ready. She was a mixed race woman. And I found this out because a Twitter thread came across my page recently where it was like, "can't believe they cast Ginnifer Goodwin to play a black woman," basically. And I was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are we talking about here?" So I did some research. Her grandparents were from Italy. And then Vivian, according to her at the time, her grandmother--I mean, her mother's family--was like, German and Irish.
Jojo  
Mmhmm.
Sarah  
So in real life, Vivian was photographed at a court hearing with Johnny when he was arrested for drug possession. And in the photo, she looks darker skinned than him. And so at the time, I found an article... oh, in the Washington Post, and it said, "at the time in the eyes of most Americans, you were either black or you weren't." And interracial marriage would not become legal until 1967. So leaders of the racist National State's Rights Party in Alabama ran an article in their newspaper "exposing" Johnny for having a "Negro" wife, basically being like, "they're trying to hide the fact that she's black."
Jojo  
Ahh. Right.
Sarah  
And they were connected to the KKK, this organization was, and they boycotted him for like a year. So he had to basically file a counter attack and sue them for this, because Vivian at the time thought that she was white. She had gone to all white schools, and on her birth certificate, marriage certificate, it says Caucasian, because...
Jojo  
Ah, right.
Sarah  
That's what their whole family thought they were. So in THIS year, February of 2021, Roseanne Cash--Johnny's daughter, who is also a country star in her own right--went on the show "Finding Your Roots". Which is about genealogy and DNA tracing.
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
And they found that Vivian Cash's--so Vivian, the wife's--maternal great great grandmother was an enslaved black woman named Sarah Shields, whose white Father, in 1848, had "granted her and her eight siblings their freedom and their passage into whiteness." So she married a white man. And by the time Jim Crow arrived in the 1930s, all of her children and their descendants were listed as white. So...
Jojo  
Wow.
Sarah  
...she had basically erased her own blackness, Sarah Shields did, from her descendants.
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
So Vivian Cash did not even know that she had a black ancestor.
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
So, I was ready to come on the podcast and be like, "Can you believe they whitewashed this character?" But in 2005...
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
...we were still taking Vivian's word for it--and her whole family's word for it--that she didn't have any black relatives.
Jojo  
Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah  
So isn't that interesting? [laughs]
Jojo  
That's so crazy. Like to, I mean, to not know that, too. I feel like...
Sarah  
I know.
Jojo  
...that's such a huge part of your identity, to not know for your entire-- I mean, for your adult life too, not even... like, it's one thing if you didn't know as a kid, because you just didn't know any better. But to have have that all throughout your adulthood, like, that's crazy.
Sarah  
Yeah, it probably made the real Vivian's life easier that she had been passing, you know?
Jojo  
Oh, yeah. Right.
Sarah  
But it is kind of heartbreaking to know that, like, this enslaved woman's story wasn't known until now.
Jojo  
Yeah. Until many, many, many years later.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
That's crazy!
Sarah  
I know! So I just thought it was really interesting. The other thing I'll say about this character is that... this is the thing I don't like about biopics. It's that there's often, in the stories of great men--like, genius men--there's often a first wife or a first girlfriend who is just seen as a long-suffering wife, who has his children. But basically, the audience is kind of meant to see her as a complainer who's holding him back from achieving his destiny.
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
And I definitely think that she serves that role in this movie. And it kind of is a disservice to her, because they were married for like 12 years.
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
And probably a lot of those years were really difficult for her. So I think it sucks for her to just be portrayed as like, she's holding him back from being the real Johnny Cash, and also holding him back from his relationship with June, which is also problematic.
Jojo  
Right, right. I think that's a lot of biopics, too, it's like, you know.... Oh, you're right. She definitely... she definitely looks like she has some sort of Black in her history.
Sarah  
Yeah, she looks darker skinned. And like, you know, at the time, she was probably just like, "Oh, I have olive tone. I have Italian, you know, Mediterranean DNA."
Jojo  
Right, right. Right.
Sarah  
Yeah. So that's the real life Vivian and Johnny. Okay.
Jojo  
So interesting.
Sarah  
I know, right? So I... that just kind of gave me the lesson of, like: don't get mad about things you see on Twitter without actually reading what they're about. [laughs]
Jojo  
Do the research first.
Sarah  
Yeah. All right. Moving on. Moving on. So this is Jerry Lee Lewis, and I love him. He's sort of... he has a more flamboyant style, obviously. My brother was watching this movie with me and said he looked really 70s, and I could agree with that.
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
Even though this is the 50s at this point. He has sort of, like, unbuttoned... very rakish hair. And then this is him in real life. So I feel like it's a pretty good job casting.
Jojo  
Ohh. Yeah.
Sarah  
Okay, let's talk about June because let's get to the main event, honestly.
Jojo  
Yeah!
Sarah  
This is a picture of Reese on set. So her hair is not... like, I think her hair is in rollers.
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
And she's just walking to or from. But this is the best picture I could find of this whole dress. There's not a lot of really good high quality pictures out there.
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
And Arianne talks about this costume. So she says for June Carter Cash, she referenced 1950s Howdy Doody culture and Minnie Pearl, who... I don't know really who that is. Didn't Google it. "She found her talisman for the character at the Santa Monica Vintage Expo, a ruffled red organza dress with a sweetheart neckline and Swiss dot overlay," that she wears in basically her first scene. And they had to rework it, and redo it, because it was rotting, apparently.
Jojo  
Ohh.
Sarah  
So I wonder if that means that they replaced the whole lining, or did they take a pattern off it and basically make a replica? Unclear. Yeah. And she says, "the dress summed up for me the place that June Carter comes from as a child performer, as this comedic character at the Grand Ole Opry. I knew we would see her transform into a woman but the starting point was this cartoonish country girl." So June says in the movie that her sisters are the pretty ones and the talented ones, and that she had to learn to be funny.
Jojo  
Mmhmm.
Sarah  
And so we can see, sort of, it's a little immature and young-looking, and definitely sort of cartoony.
Jojo  
Mmhmm. Very comedic.
Sarah  
Yes, exactly. Here is that dress onstage. And they said... I watched an interview with her on YouTube as well. She said that they did a screen test in this video.
Jojo  
Mmhmm.
Sarah  
And the... not the network. The... the studio! That's the word I'm looking for. [both laugh] The studio got worried because the sleeves were really poofy. And it was just this sort of... it was more cartoony than they were originally... thinking.
Jojo  
...Expecting. Yeah.
Sarah  
Yeah. And when you book a name as big as Reese Witherspoon, the studio definitely wants Reese Witherspoon's fans to come to the movie and see Reese Witherspoon.
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
Like, people are expecting to recognize her. So they don't want the costume to swallow her and be all that people can focus on. So...
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
...studio notes are often like, "Oh, make the lead sexier," or "tone this down."
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
And I think that they took some extra ruffles off the sleeves from what it originally looked like. But it looks pretty-- they showed some footage of the screen test and it looks pretty much the same.
Jojo  
Mmhmm. I mean, they still kept that poof sleeve too. I feel like there's still that. It doesn't take away enough from her, that you're not like, "oh, who is that?" Or like, "I'm so distracted."
Sarah  
Yeah. Exactly. Agreed. So this is Johnny onstage. And he goes... we see a few of his sort of onstage outfits before he starts only wearing black. It seems like he started wearing exclusively black on stage in the 60s. So this is him in the 50s, it's this lovely red- burgundy.
Jojo  
Yeah. Oooh.
Sarah  
I like that.
Jojo  
Does he have a design on his lapel too?
Sarah  
Oh, it... does it say JC?
Jojo  
Or J... oh yeah, that's pretty cool.
Sarah  
It's hard to find pictures of this movie, which is surprising.
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
Like, I always expect, if it was nominated for costumes, that I'll be able to find really good pictures of the costumes.
Jojo  
That's what you would think!
Sarah  
Not so much.
Jojo  
Nope.
Sarah  
So this is June later on when they're on tour. And they're kind of just walking through town, having some time off. And so we see this in contrast to her stage persona, her real life wardrobe is a lot more subdued. It's still very sweet and feminine, but it's definitely more grown up, and as she goes through the movie, it definitely gets more and more grown up as she evolves and comes into her own. Oh... do have a picture? I don't think I do. So in the interview Arianne said she found an orange and green flowered dress, a vintage one, because apparently the budget was pretty small for this.
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
So she used a lot of actual vintage, borrowed... you know, found for cheap. And one of them she found, she found an actual picture of June Carter Cash in that exact same dress! Like, she found the actual dress.
Jojo  
Oooh. Yeah.
Sarah  
But I couldn't figure out which dress it was, because she wears two that are orange and green floral. [laughs]
Jojo  
"Which one?!"
Sarah  
And it's not this one, but they're later in the movie. So I think I got rid of the pictures because I was like, "I don't know which one it is." So I can't really hold this up and be like, "See?"
Jojo  
[laughs] Right. Right.
Sarah  
So that was frustrating.
Jojo  
I do love the floral motif that she has on a lot of her stuff.
Sarah  
Yeah, I like the colors that she wears too. She doesn't stick to certain colors.
Jojo  
Right. Right.
Sarah  
I would say generally it's pretty warm. She does wear a little bit of blue. But yeah, it's just like a nice... you know, wardrobe.
Jojo  
Fun. I would wear this skirt.
Sarah  
Yeah, it's cute.
Jojo  
If I wore skirts more often. [laughs]
Sarah  
I wear too many skirts. Like, when I go to thrift stores I go to the skirts first and I ended up with... I have so many of them, and I keep buying them because I love them. Anyway.
Jojo  
[laughs] They're great.
Sarah  
So this is her onstage singing later in the movie. I think we might be moving into late 50s at this point. And then I have a full body shot of this. So once again with a floral motif.
Jojo  
So cute!
Sarah  
I know, right? She's got a little bit of a bouffant happening.
Jojo  
Mmhmm.
Sarah  
And this is definitely more streamlined in silhouette than that frilly one was at the beginning. So she's moving away from her cartoony image and into more of a serious singer.
Jojo  
Mmhmm.
Sarah  
This is her onstage again. Once again, could not find great picture. I found some on a mannequin.
Jojo  
So sad!
Sarah  
I think it was auctioned, so here's this.
Jojo  
So cute.
Sarah  
And I thought, looking at this picture of her onstage, that it was beaded.
Jojo  
Yeah, I was gonna say that's what I thought too.
Sarah  
Yeah, cuz it's sparkly. But I found this, and you can see that it's like a metallic embroidery?
Jojo  
Oh, yeah. It's almost like a trim.
Sarah  
Yeah, it's very sparkly, but it's not actually beads. It's the fabric.
Jojo  
I wonder if it's real metal, because you know how they used to have that on some of the trims?
Sarah  
Right.
Jojo  
That's probably what's creating that extra sparkle
Sarah  
Could totally be. Okay, so what's next? We're moving into.... Okay, I have this picture, it's called "John is a mess."
Jojo  
[laughs]
Sarah  
Because he's a mess. This is when he basically has lost everything, he had a breakdown on stage. He's drinking too much. He's doing drugs. Vivian has left him at this point. So he's living in this nasty apartment.
Jojo  
Mmhmm.
Sarah  
And he's wearing this, it looks like a tux shirt, because of the pleats.
Jojo  
Oh, yeah.
Sarah  
But it's clearly very... he hasn't showered, it's very yellowed. Looking pretty gross. And then... oh, I liked this. Because we got to see some period children's wear. This is an upsetting scene, as you can see, the children are crying. [laughs] But...
Jojo  
It's so funny to me, because it's always those little scenes of children that we're always like, "Okay, we HAVE to get these images." Because you just don't see them very often.
Sarah  
I love period children's wear!
Jojo  
I know. It's great.
Sarah  
Children look so cute in vintage clothes.
Jojo  
So cute. I can't wait.
Sarah  
I was at a party the other day and one of the kids running around was wearing... it looked like a little Oktoberfest dirndl, but it was vintage.
Jojo  
Yes!
Sarah  
It was like a three year old girl wearing a vintage dress.
Jojo  
Love that.
Sarah  
And I was like, "that girl looks so good."
Jojo  
On point, mom! On point.
Sarah  
I know. I was like, "you're doing it correctly." I love that. Yeah, I mean... I haven't anything to say about them. They're just cute. And I like seeing period kid's clothes.
Jojo  
Yeah. Yep. Agreed.
Sarah  
Okay, how am I doing on time? I'm doing great on time! Yay.
Jojo  
Woohoo!
Sarah  
This is Thanksgiving, later when Johnny is starting to get his act together, but hasn't quite. But he invites basically his parents and then June and her parents, and it ends up getting very awkward because his dad is very... his dad sucks, basically, his dad is really mean. But this is in the 60s, as you can see from the hair, and such. [laughs]
Jojo  
Yep.
Sarah  
And on the left here, this is Johnny's mom. So she's gone through a big transformation since we saw her in the 40s, of course. She has money. She's hopefully happier, even though her husband sucks.
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
And then June in the middle is... oh, I have this dress. Here it is.
Jojo  
So beautiful.
Sarah  
It's pretty.
Jojo  
It's that lantern sleeve that I love again!
Sarah  
I know, we love a lantern sleeve.
Jojo  
So funny. I keep seeing that everywhere. I'm like, "just looks good every time I see it."
Sarah  
It does. And also, in my opinion, it's timeless.
Jojo  
Yeah, I agree. It's a really elegant look.
Sarah  
Yes.
Jojo  
Especially, I mean, most of the ones I've seen happen to be transparent or some kind of see-through material. So maybe I'm just a little more biased, but I just think it looks really nice. And it's just, I don't know, it's kind of secretive and seductive while also being classy.
Sarah  
Yeah, you're covered up, but you're not.
Jojo  
Right, exactly.
Sarah  
Totally. So this dress is, I think it's probably chiffon. It's this gorgeous burgundy. It looks so good with her brown hair.
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
And it's totally free of surface decoration, you know? So it's like her final sort of evolution into a more mature adult woman. And then, I would say, we talk a lot about how in period movies you can kind of tell what era they're made in, because they don't quite go all the way to the period.
Jojo  
Mmhmm.
Sarah  
And I think that we can see that in Reese's hair for a lot of the movie, and probably a little bit in the makeup too, because her makeup looks pretty modern for the time in a lot of the shots, like this one right here. I mean, she has a maybe a little liquid eyeliner on. And the lipstick is definitely pink. You know, that's definitely a 50s/60s color. But...
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
I think the way she's styled, they clearly wanted to make sure ...like I said, the studio wanted to make sure that people saw her.
Jojo  
...It was a good enough balance that it still felt like it could relate to contemporary audience.
Sarah  
Exactly. They don't want to make... they don't want to alienate her from her audience by making her look too removed from the Reese that we know and love. So I think that that's a pretty good balance, actually, that they struck, because this hairstyle is pretty period looking. But it's also... it also looks kind of 2005, so there's that.
Jojo  
Yeah, seriously.
Sarah  
All right. Oh, I was close to cutting this picture. But I was like, "couldn't possibly do it." This coat.
Jojo  
I love it. Love it so much.
Sarah  
So good.
Jojo  
I do love a good pea coat. in general.
Sarah  
It's... I love all coats. I love codes from all periods. I think everybody looks good in coats. I like summer a lot, but I will say some of my best outfits involve a jacket, because I love jackets and coats.
Jojo  
Yeah. That's why I miss fall so much. All the pea coats you can wear.
Sarah  
This is when she she takes him to... she's basically helping him get his his life together. And she takes him to church. So here they are going to church. And he's kind of like, I don't know... I like a lot of his offstage wear and I would have pulled some of it but this movie stays really tight on like, heads and shoulders. So there weren't any good screencaps I could find of most of the stuff he wears offstage. So, you'll just have to trust me that a lot of it's really cute. [laughs]
Jojo  
I trust you, Sarah.
Sarah  
All right. And here is his freakin'... like, he's back. He's at the record label being like, "guess what? I'm gonna play a show at Folsom Prison." And they're like, "Say what?" And actually, I enjoyed this because there was a scene of him getting dressed. So... ta-da. Close up on that fabric. I love it.
Jojo  
Mmhmm.  Ooh, yeah.
Sarah  
Arianne said that while they had a small budget, the money they did spend was getting a lot of his stuff custom made. So...
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
...you can kind of tell, you know, it looks great, especially this outfit.
Jojo  
That's usually how we prioritize, you know. The lead character usually is who gets kind of the more custom made items, or at least the ones that are... a little more focus are put on them.
Sarah  
Exactly. And I think she probably saved a lot of money on shoes, because like I said, hardly any shots of anybody's full body in this movie. [laughs]
Jojo  
Mmhmm.
Sarah  
Okay, and then here's him performing at Folsom. And I like this because of the the stark visual contrast between all of the inmates in blue, and then him in black in the middle. I just think it's a really effective picture.
Jojo  
Mmhmm. Yeah.
Sarah  
And then I have one last one. This is when they're performing on stage. And he proposes her onstage, which is a very sweet scene. But she also had said no to him so many times. Like, obviously, he knew that she was in love with him. And he could feel that and probably could feel that she wanted to marry him. But he also... it's also just a little bit like he pressures her into it. Just a tiny... it's still very sweet, though.
Jojo  
Juuust a little bit.
Sarah  
It's... Yeah.
Jojo  
I mean, anytime you do something that public.
Sarah  
Right, you're like...
Jojo  
They don't really have another option.
Sarah  
Exactly. You're like, "Oh, so you won't say yes on the tour bus. So you'll say yes onstage in front of hundreds of people." [both laugh] I like this outfit on June. I think it looks a little bit 2000s-y. But I wonder if it is vintage. And it just kind of happens to look contemporary?
Jojo  
Yeah, like maybe a repeated silhouette or something.
Sarah  
Yeah, exactly. But it's very nice. Oh, and then this is when we come to this picture, because this is them onstage in the 60s.
Jojo  
Oh, cute.
Sarah  
I know. As we can see, the hair; very different. They did not go for a full 60s bouffant on her.
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
For reasons as we have discussed. But I love this little dress. Look at this kicky little skirt. So cute!
Jojo  
Very cute.
Sarah  
Okay, so the thing I just wanted to finish up saying, is I watched... like I said, I watched an interview with her. It was at a film festival of some kind, and it was her and James Mangold.
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
The director. And she just brought up a couple points. And I was like, "let's chat about that a little bit." She talked a lot about how the wardrobe department is an actor's, basically, first foray into their character.
Jojo  
Mmhmm.
Sarah  
It's often the first thing they do on the movie, having a costume fitting and meeting with the costume designer.
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
So lots of times, the movie actor is coming from another project, they're really busy. You know, this is the first chance they've had to kind of stand there and be like, "oh, who is this character? What did they look like? How do they stand?"
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
So I just thought that was really interesting, that costumes are often their first chance to see themselves as the character.
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
And they also they find a lot of their physicality in costume fittings, how are they going to stand? How are they going to walk?
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
So I just thought that was a really good point. And probably something that average people don't necessarily know, is that like, the first thing is not a rehearsal, sometimes. Sometimes the first thing is costumes.
Jojo  
Yeah. And that happens often very late in the game, especially for theatre. So it's like, sometimes... I mean, they have been doing their own research into the character, but once they actually see themselves. And I had that conversation with a few actors too, where they're like, "I was getting into my character, and I was understanding them a little bit. But it wasn't until I got into the costume that I fully embodied, like, who this character was." So that's always a kind of rewarding moment, I feel like, for designers. Because it really does mean you've thought about it... I mean, you both have thought about it. And you've clearly made those choices very intentionally. But to see the actor really get into the character that you've created for them too is a really nice part of the collaboration, I think.
Sarah  
Totally. And things can change, obviously, that's what fittings are for.
Jojo  
Yeah, absolutely.
Sarah  
And so something that you as a designer might think was perfect for the character, the actor might be like, "Well, I'm not sure, you know, if this is right, because of these reasons," and then you find, and you explore it together. And that's how it should be. It should be a dialogue and a relationship between you--the designer--the actor, and the director. It should be a collaboration and that's what I love about it.
Jojo  
Right. And that's what makes it so collaborative, is that you are having an open dialogue about it, and that it's not just "you just do whatever I want." Although that sometimes may be the case, if you've had a really extensive conversation with a director. But yeah, I think that's very important. So that's cool.
Sarah  
Yeah. And then the other thing she talks about is like, she said that she specializes in distracting actors during fittings. And I was like, "that's interesting." Because actors can often feel really objectified.
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
And I think it can be dehumanizing, especially, to be in a costume fitting when people are staring at your body, talking about your body, like you aren't in the room.
Jojo  
Right?
Sarah  
So it can be really hard when you make your living off of partially how you look.
Jojo  
Mmhmm.
Sarah  
So she said she likes to just chat with them and get them out of their head and get them out of focusing on the flaws they see in the mirror and just really work on her relationship with them in the fitting. And I was like, "yeah, that's a good thing to do." Because you don't want them to feel like they're just a mannequin being dressed.
Jojo  
Yeah. Yeah, I feel like sometimes those are the most.... Well, I guess I'm a little more biased, because most of the costume designers that I know, that I think are really successful, are the ones that do build that rapport with their actors, and sometimes become friends with their actors, because they've built up that relationship. And they've built that trust. And that's also-- I mean, you never know, an actor sometimes can be the one getting you the next job, too.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
Even though people don't necessarily think about it that way. But you know, it's such a small industry, you really don't ever know who's going to get you your next job.
Sarah  
Totally.
Jojo  
So I think building that relationship with whoever you're working with, and in this case with actors, it's the most intimate relationship that you can have. It really does go a long way, when you're able to build that trust. I mean, you know, Arianne is the perfect example with Madonna, building up that trust and being that person that becomes her go-to. That's how she got a lot of her other work.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
So it's kind of a cool... like, you get to see sort of how the relationship changes and shifts and builds and still kind of benefits both parties, because of that trust. So that's always important.
Sarah  
Totally. Yeah. Yeah.
Jojo  
So excitiing.
Sarah  
So that's "Walk the Line". And those are my little side tangents that I was like, "let's chat about this, this will be fun."
Jojo  
Good sidewalk conversations. [both laugh]
Sarah  
Yeah. We like sort of diving into stuff that, you know, average, people who don't necessarily work in the industry might not think about or know. And it's all about shedding light and opening people up to what they might not know about.
Jojo  
Yeah. And hopefully that's, you know, that's what makes our podcast interesting, too, is...
Sarah  
I hope so too. [laughs]
Jojo  
... hearing more of that stuff. And even though it is costume related, but yeah.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
Opening it up to other things, because we don't just live in a vacuum of costume.
Sarah  
Totally, it's not just about the pretty dresses, even though it we like those too.
Jojo  
Yeah, very true.
Sarah  
All right.
Jojo  
Okay, let me...
Sarah  
Are you ready? What's your movie?
Jojo  
I'm doing "The Impossible," which... I'm just trying to get my stuff loaded up. So I can see my notes, as well as my pictures.
Sarah  
Yeah, no problem.
Jojo  
And I don't have a ton of pictures for this. Because again, very similar to Sarah, even though this movie actually got quite a few nominations, and Oscar wins, there were just really not a ton of pictures of this. And I mean, some of it is kind of understandable. Because it is a movie that is about a natural disaster. And so, you know, a lot of the costumes are naturally very, very distressed.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
And it's not like it's some beautiful thing that you see on a mannequin that you can put on afterwards. It's really more about kind of seeing the realistic, I guess, and natural way that costumes can break down over time. So I kind of wanted to choose it for that reason, because as many of you know, I am really into distressing costumes. And I've talked about this in the past. So this, unfortunately... there were not a lot of pictures of all kind of the step by steps, which I wish that I could have gotten. But I'm going to try and at least get some kind of important beats throughout the movie, where we can actually see how the costume kind of changed, at least. And sort of how the the costume designer-- it was actually multiple--how they were sort of coming up with, you know, where these outfits came from and that kind of thing.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
Okay, so really quick, just talking about some of the background for "The Impossible". The director is J.A. Bay... Bayona? I think that's how you say his name. I believe he's actually a Spanish--like, from Spain--director. I don't know exactly what his ethnicity is, but he did projects like "The Orphanage," which was his directorial debut. He also did "A Monster Calls," which I've never...
Sarah  
Oh yeah.
Jojo  
...I've never actually seen the movie but I have a whole book on all of the the creative visual effects that they did for that movie, which is phenomenal.
Sarah  
I've read the book that that's based on, but I have not seen the movie.
Jojo  
Okay. Yeah. And then he also did "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom". So one of the newer ones.
Sarah  
Okay! Wow.
Jojo  
So his choices of what he directs is very, very eclectic and very versatile. So that was kind of interesting. But his directorial resume actually is not super long. But the fact is, even though he hasn't done a ton of projects, they've all been pretty big and well recognized at least. And then in terms of the costume designer, it was actually three people. And again, they're all... none of them are very big designers. Anne Bingeman, I think is how you say her name. She did "Deception". And she also did the the comedy "Bachelorette".
Sarah  
Oh yeah, I've seen that.
Jojo  
Yeah. Which I was like, "Oh, that's interesting." Very different movies.
Sarah  
Did we watch that together?
Jojo  
We might have! I feel like we did.
Sarah  
With Jessica?
Jojo  
Oh yeah, I think we did.
Sarah  
[both laugh] I think we did!
Jojo  
That's so funny, because I was like, "I know I watched it with somebody."
Sarah  
That's really funny.
Jojo  
And then Sparka Lee, which I thought was a very interesting name, literally spelled "spark" with an A at the end. She's mostly a costume supervisor and assistant. And I think that was kind of her role in this as well.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
But she did "The Constant Gardener". She was an assistant, I believe, for "Resident Evil," "Speed Racer," "The Reader," and then she was a supervisor for a lot of "The Queen's Gambit".
Sarah  
Oh, nice.
Jojo  
So she's probably had a little bit more of a recognizable career than the other two. And then the third costume designer was Maria Reyes. And she does a lot more foreign TV shows. So I don't think... there was a lot of stuff that I didn't recognize, I wrote them down. But they're not things-- they're not titles that I recognize. They're "Merli," "Oh Happy Day," which is also a TV show. And then "La torre de Suso," which I think is also a movie. But again, all titles that I was like, "I've never heard of any of these things." But maybe it's just because it's in a different country. And I've just haven't seen them.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
So yeah, so that's just a little bit of background. Just to tell you a little bit more about the actual event that this was based on... it follows a tourist family who ends up heading to Thailand, and this was back in like 2004. So there was a huge tsunami, which is actually... it said that it was one of the largest tsunamis in record, even to today. And that occurred in the Indian Ocean. So basically it pretty much wiped out the entire coast of Thailand in 2004. So there were, let's see, what were the statistics that I wrote down? It was considered the deadliest tsunami in recorded history. It was a 200 foot wave. It wiped away entire towns and the lives of over 200,000 people across 14 countries.
Sarah  
Oh my god.
Jojo  
So this thing was huge. And it was traveling from Indonesia. But this this particular movie focuses mostly on Thailand. And then the death toll in Thailand was nearly 5400, including 2000 foreign tourists.
Sarah  
Wow.
Jojo  
So this focuses on one specific tourist family who, miraculously, all five of the family members ended up surviving. But there were obviously a lot of other tourist deaths that were also happening at this time.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
So just to give you a little bit more background, because again, I don't have a ton of pictures. But I was curious how well they translated, I guess, what happened in real life versus what happened to this family, because it is a very isolated event. And actually, it only took place over about two days.
Sarah  
Oh, wow.
Jojo  
But of course, the entire time during the movie, you're just like... I was like crying and tense and all these other emotions, just because I was like, "I don't know what's going to happen to these people, even though I kind of do."
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
And also you're just watching them almost drown multiple times. And I think he spends a lot of time focusing on them underwater, getting hit and all this debris and everything. So of course, all those moments, you're kind of just sitting in tension, waiting, and hoping that they're going to resurface and and be able to breathe and survive. But the original family... and this is what I wanted to kind of touch base on, because I was a little confused. And there is a lot of critiquing about how they portrayed this movie, because the original family that survived was actually Spanish.
Sarah  
Oh.
Jojo  
And of course, all the actors that they cast for this were all well known white actors. And I think there was a back and forth of like, well, they chose these white actors. And there's a lot of white savior complex in there, even though there is you know, obviously they were in Thailand, and so they took a lot of the locals to portray, you know, the hospitals and the nurses and all the people that ended up helping. But the big critique was that it was essentially at the very end of it, the white family that survived while they didn't really focus on how much it actually affected the Thai people in the aftermath.
Sarah  
Do you know if if the family, the original family, was Spanish from Spain? Or were they Hispanic?
Jojo  
I believe they were from Spain. So yeah, not Hispanic, sorry.
Sarah  
There are white people in Spain but like...
Jojo  
Correct.
Sarah  
...it still would have been better to cast actual Spanish people.
Jojo  
Yeah. And I mean, it's very clear, the original lady was named Maria Belón. She was a physician. And then her husband's name is Enrique Álvarez. So you know, it's interesting the choices that they made. And you know, in justification, they actually did have the original Maria Belón come back, and literally be an advisor on--and guider on--the entire film.
Sarah  
That's good.
Jojo  
So she had a lot of, like... she was telling a lot of her own experience. And they said that their first interview with her... because I think she was also trying to figure out if these filmmakers were the right people to tell her story. Her first interview with them was actually five hours long, just her telling what happened.
Sarah  
Wow.
Jojo  
And I was like, "five hours?" Like, I can't even imagine. So a lot of, actually, what happened to Naomi Watts in the movie did in fact happen to Maria, in very much the same way. Even the way that the tsunami originally, or initially, approached them or attacked them. Like, they said that they actually had the family members standing in the same exact spot at that resort, where their family was. And I was like, "yikes." Like, I don't-- as an actor...
Sarah  
Wow.
Jojo  
...I don't know that I would.... Like, that would have been so mentally like... I'm not ready for this.
Sarah  
That's a... that's heavy. That's like...
Jojo  
It is.
Sarah  
...that's a lot.
Jojo  
Definitely. And they actually, so they were from Japan originally. Sorry-- they lived in Japan for Álvarez's job. And then they ended up going to Thailand for Christmas. So they were actually there for holiday.
Sarah  
It was Christmas time?
Jojo  
Yeah. So crazy.
Sarah  
That is heartbreaking.
Jojo  
And then they said that in terms of the actual injuries that she suffered--because I was also curious about how much of that they translated--Belón apparently suffered severe thigh and chest injuries, which is also what they did in the movie for Naomi Watts. So like, very, very much exactly like what she experienced was what they kind of recreated.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
Both parents ended up being separated from their children. So they had three sons, Lucas, Simón, and Tomás were the original names. They changed them to very white names of Lucas, Simon and Thomas.
Sarah  
Ooh.
Jojo  
And then even Enrique, they changed to Henry. Maria, they kept as Maria. But their last name was actually Bennett instead of, you know, Maria Belón and Álvarez.
Sarah  
That's...
Jojo  
So like that part of it, I was a little bit like, "uhhhh..."
Sarah  
How do you excuse that? Like, how do you... we wanted to get the movie made, and we didn't think that they would fund a movie with no white people in it?
Both  
[editor's note: our apologies, we do know that Spain is primarily Caucasian. Our use of "white people" in these exchanges is incorrect. We meant that instead of casting people who looked like the familiy--dark hair and olive skin--they cast very fair people and Anglicized their names, essentially changing the fact that the family is Spanish.]
Jojo  
Right. And I think that was the one person that critiqued it. They were like, "why did they choose not to use a, you know, a more well known celebrity that was from Spain?"
Sarah  
There are a lot, yeah.
Jojo  
Like, I think they had mentioned Penélope Cruz as an option, you know, things like that. And it was interesting because Maria, the original lady, actually said that when she talked to Naomi Watts, she felt the most... like she could relate to her the most when they were talking about the role.
Sarah  
Okay.
Jojo  
So I was like, "Oh, that's interesting that she connected the most with a white lady to represent her." Like...
Sarah  
Yeah, I'm glad that basically she gave her blessing on it.
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
Like, I'm glad she's not upset by the decision. Yeah, but it is kind of bad optics, you know?
Jojo  
Very much so, especially now. I mean, this was created a couple years ago, but like...
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
...you know, it's just weird to think about it now, when everything is so much more sensitive about that.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
Okay. So let's see. One thing that I did want to mention, Naomi Watts quoted Belón when they spoke, she said, "Belón felt completely sure of her instinct." And this was like, during the time of the tsunami, everything that happened. She said, "Nothing got in the way of her instinct, and she'd never had that feeling before." So I think that was something that really helped Naomi kind of get into her character as well. Which you definitely do see that, like they make Naomi a little bit more fearful, I think, in the movie. Like she... when they start off on the plane flying to Thailand. She's already nervous about all the bumpiness on the plane.
Sarah  
Hmm.
Jojo  
And then when she goes into the actual... when she actually has to save her son, or try to reach her son, there's a little bit more of a jump of her anxiety, becoming a mother and trying to save her children. So moving on to costumes.
Sarah  
Costumes!
Jojo  
Sorry, I spent way too long talking about that, but I figured I would at least show some background. [laughs]
Sarah  
Yeah, it's good to have that information.
Jojo  
Before we talked about it.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
So I wanted to show you the original family. And you can tell they're... they look very Spanish, like from Spain. Like, all their features are very "from Spain." And then you have the white family that represents them. So... so yeah, it's quite a big difference. Ewan McGregor plays Henry.
Sarah  
[laughs] I'm sorry.
Jojo  
Naomi Watts plays Maria, obviously... I know.
Sarah  
We couldn't even put them in dark hair? Like, we couldn't even dye their hair? Okay. All right.
Jojo  
Yeah, yeah.
Sarah  
They had to be blonde.
Jojo  
And then we had, interestingly enough, this is actually Tom Holland.
Sarah  
Oh my god!
Jojo  
So funny, because I was like, "Oh, yeah, I forgot he was in this movie!"
Sarah  
Little baby.
Jojo  
He's so, so young in this movie. And he plays our oldest child, Lucas. And then we have our middle child, our little blond, blue eyed kid, who I believe is Simon. And then our youngest is Thomas. So I kind of wanted to pull this picture out, just because throughout the movie, the designers actually kept a really, really tight palette for them. So it was a lot of really nice earth tones. They're mostly in... like, if it's white, it's a kind of cream. I mean, this is probably the lightest white, and it's only the mom.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
The rest of the time, most of the guys are either in blues or greens, you'll see a lot of kind of deep grays, or kind of cooler tone grays. So I think they really did a good job of kind of sticking to that.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
And then... and this is all, of course, before everything happens.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
This is a little out of order. But this was the original outfit that Maria is in. And this is pretty much the outfit she's in the entire time she's suffering through this tsunami. So she starts off, obviously, in this white tank top and the blue shorts. And of course, throughout the movie, there's so much that's happened. She's like, drowning in muddy water. So this totally looks like a completely different outfit by the end of this.
Sarah  
Right.
Jojo  
But this is sort of where she starts.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
Okay, and then... so this was actually supposed to be before the other one. But this was basically one of the nights before the tsunami hits. They actually have a little lantern, which is very famous in Thailand, they do the lantern release.
Sarah  
Oh yeah. Mmhmm.
Jojo  
Where they're seeing the lanterns fly into the sky. And this is kind of their last calm and nice moment as a family. So I love that, again, it's still earth tones, but these beautiful greens that the costume designers decided to use here really kind of ties them into the the natural setting of Thailand as well.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
She actually ends up putting these kind of tropical flowers in her hair. So it's this very tropical feeling, you know, they are on vacation.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
So I did love that they kind of tied everyone together very tightly, in terms of color. Alright, so...
Sarah  
Oh boy. Here we go.
Jojo  
...after the tsunami hits, you can already see her white tank top has turned yellow.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
She's already covered in mud. And even her blue shorts have kind of turned sort of a gray. It looks like they've kind of given her some... almost like salt stains.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
Because this is after the water has kind of died down. But she's sort of still... kind of trying to find her way to help. They end up picking up this kid, which apparently this also happened in real life. They actually found a stray kid that they helped for a little while named Daniel.
Sarah  
Oh my gosh.
Jojo  
And in the movie they totally just make it a happy ending where he finds his dad, and they see him reunite with his dad. In the real situation, apparently Daniel was never found again. Like, somehow he got separated from them a second time and they never found out what happened to him.
Sarah  
Oh, no.
Jojo  
So it's like... it's just this really heartbreaking moment.
Sarah  
That's too dark, too dark for the movie, I guess.
Jojo  
It really is, it really is.
Sarah  
Oh, that's so sad.
Jojo  
And you can kind of see even with Lucas, he, you know, he's still got that kind of blue swimming shorts. I mean, like I said, there's not a ton of costume, interesting things here because they're in swimwear.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
They're at the pool when the tsunami hits. So it's like, very kind of bare minimum clothing.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
But you do start seeing how much this kind of changes, even just seeing all of the different details of what water does to our clothes, after being in a muddy tsunami. And the other thing, too, that's interesting is she was wearing a swimming suit under this when everything happened, and somehow the swimsuit has just sort of disappeared.
Sarah  
Oh!
Jojo  
Because during this time, she actually... underwater, gets stabbed in this, in the rib cage. And also a whole chunk of her back thigh is just missing. So there's a scene where-- I didn't want to show it because it was just very, very graphic.
Sarah  
That's fine. [laughs]
Jojo  
But you see the kid walking behind her, and he just sees a chunk of her leg just flapping down and he's like, "I can't."
Sarah  
Ugh!
Jojo  
He's like, "I can look at you right now," and so she makes him walk in front of her, so he doesn't have to look at it. And that's why she has this little thing tied around her leg, to like, keep the skin up. And I'm like, "oh my god."
Sarah  
Oh god. [laughs]
Jojo  
But yes, it's a lot of... and again, this is where it kind of gets down to the nitty gritty of like, this costume crafts person had to understand what each of these steps were. Like, everything that hits her has to somehow show up on her clothes.
Sarah  
Yes.
Jojo  
So you know, you start seeing the blood kind of dripping and staining from the side-- the side injury, but then you also see the blood kind of getting on some of her pants.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
It's just like, I don't know, it's so much to think about. Especially in a natural disaster, this where literally everything is making you dirty. [laughs]
Sarah  
Yes, that's the daunting part of distressing, I think. Like, you must have to completely storyboard it.
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
And then that's how you figure out how many duplicates you need. And you must have to like, just lay it all out.
Jojo  
Yeah. And I... you know, even in this, it's like, they must have had to have, you know, 15 or 16 copies of this shirt alone.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
Like, even just for a 20 minute segment, just because she goes through so much trauma, and she's still wading through water even after it kind of subsides. So like, there's still things that are happening, because she's still trudging through terrain, so...
Sarah  
Well, and then you're like, "Okay, so how many times does she have to do to the take," you know.
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
"Do we need a fresh one at the beginning of every take, so that she can get wet?"
Jojo  
Right, exactly.
Sarah  
So yeah, it's so much to think about.
Jojo  
And that also makes me wonder why we have, you know... it's probably why they had three costume people.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
And also why they had a supervisor in addition to, you know, maybe a more seasoned designer, because someone who's a supervisor understands more of that craft stuff. And usually, they'll either at least have someone on hand that they know who can do that, or they're often the ones doing some of the craft stuff.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
So it's, you know, it's sort of interesting how they pulled together their team. Like, it makes a lot more sense when you're looking at the amount of craziness that has to happen to these costumes in terms of breaking them down.
Sarah  
Yeah. And you need people on set who know exactly what is supposed to be happening when.
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
So I think that is... that's kind of probably what a supervisor would do too, right? Is be, like...
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
...in charge of knowing which one is for which scene.
Jojo  
Right, right, and making sure everything is organized in such a way that they don't get those mixed up.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
But yeah. Okay.
Sarah  
Wow, oh no.
Jojo  
So this is the next stage. She gets basically dragged through... I mean, there's quite a few things that happen in between this, of course, but a big part of this--the original story, too--was that a Thai man actually ended up dragging her through the mud. And like, this is so hard to watch, because she's just screaming in pain the entire time. And they just-- they're just dragging her through grass, and like...
Sarah  
Ohh.
Jojo  
...mud and all these other things. And she... you know, it's the back of her leg. So it's just getting ripped up even more. But that's his only way of trying to get her to a hospital and get her to somewhere safe.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
And you see her son in the front. Like, it's interesting, because clearly the people making this movie did not want to hurt children or make them look hurt. So like, the two youngest kids, don't look distressed or dirty or anything at all.
Sarah  
[laughs] Not bloody.
Jojo  
You see maybe one or two scenes where Tom Holland gets kind of beat up under the water, but you know, in terms of the amount of pain and injury that he sustained, it's much, much less than...
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
...what Naomi Watts goes through.
Sarah  
People don't want to see kids getting hurt.
Jojo  
It's so true. So yeah, they definitely kept them pretty clean in general. But she, again, she gets stabbed right in the side. And then it's really gross. Like, they actually show her boob all sliced up underneath. And so, you know, her son's obviously freaking out because she's like, falling apart in front of him.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
And so she ends up having to tie one of her tank top straps to the other side, just to, like, cover herself.
Sarah  
Uh huh.
Jojo  
So yeah, it's just, you know, this looks so horrible here. But again, it just shows you this is sort of the next few steps that our craftsperson had to pay attention to.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
She's getting dragged through the mud. She's also got all the blood on top, she's probably bleeding more because she's being dragged through other stuff. So it's just all those things that you have to pay attention to. Because as humans, that's what would happen in real life.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
So yes, so she ends up wearing pretty much this outfit for the rest of the time until she's she's able to get to the hospital.
Sarah  
Wow.
Jojo  
Okay, so Tom Holland. Obviously when he gets to the hospital, somehow he finds a shirt. Or like, they end up... so when they get to the actual Thai village, where it's a little safer, they actually have a-- it's basically like all the local people end up coming and, you know, putting... they end up giving her a shirt. They end up, you know, giving Lucas another shirt. But one of the reasons I wanted to pull this image is not just because it's like, "Okay, great, now we have a costume change." But it kind of also goes to show the kind of clothes that are overseas. Because a lot of times, overseas countries do end up just getting, essentially, the waste that America gets rid of.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
So it's interesting that we're looking at graphics that look a little bit more American, but it's almost like it's faded out, or it's not quite there anymore.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
Like these are old clothes that have been discarded from elsewhere.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
So I kinda want to just pull that in. Because I mean, it just says... even with how kind of dingy it looks, it tells you a lot about what's actually in the rest of the world, and how other people manufacture clothing, or even get clothing from other places. Or wealthier places.
Sarah  
Yeah, I think, you know, Americans at large don't necessarily think about what happens to our clothes when...
Jojo  
Mmhmm.
Sarah  
...you know, they can't even be sold in Goodwill or whatever.
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
That's what happens, is that we ship them to other countries and just... make it their problem instead of ours.
Jojo  
Yeah. Yeah. And like, he gets this as a new shirt, but you can see how torn up the collar is, and how the sleeves are all torn up.
Sarah  
Yeah. And the graphic is faded.
Jojo  
So yes, I just thought that was a really interesting way to kind of introduce that.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
Okay, so then the second half of the movie, they kind of go... I mean, because the first half of the movie you're really focusing on how Naomi is able to find her son, and they stay together, and how they're able to get to the hospital.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
And hers is probably the much more traumatic experience, because I think she obviously went through a lot more injuries. Somehow, Ewan McGregor stays fairly intact and untouched through all of this. Which is weird. But he's also in the pool with his kids when he starts.
Sarah  
Oh.
Jojo  
And I wanted to pull this image, even though it's the dirty version of this, because he has these pretty standard Hawaiian blue swimming trunks. But in the beginning, his kids are just making fun of how ugly they are. [laughs] And so it's just funny that, you know, it... obviously, it's not a huge thing, but then they just get so dirty and ripped up by the time he gets through the tsunami. And yet, somehow, the only injuries he sustains are maybe a few scars here and there on his face.
Sarah  
Wow.
Jojo  
And when they find him, or when he starts his kind of portion of the story, he's still back at the resort. So somehow, he's survived enough after the water has kind of subsided, to still remain at the resort. And he's somehow found his two kids. So like, apparently, they were also clinging to a tree. And that's how he found both of them. Like, they were both, you know, just holding on.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
And so at this point, the water has subsided. The rest of the movie, his goal is to just basically find his wife and his kids, because he feels like they're alive, even though no one else seems to think so. So I just wanted to pull that image really quick, because that's mostly what he's in until he's able to find a shirt.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
Later on, this is still him looking for his wife, he's kind of talking to his kids and trying to convince his middle child that he has to take care of Thomas, because you know, they're going to go somewhere safe to the top of the mountain so that it's far away from the water. And then he's going to keep looking for his wife. So basically, this is sort of like a "grow up, you gotta man up and take care of your younger brother."
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
Because he's also the kid that's afraid of everything at the beginning of the movie.
Sarah  
Aww. I relate to that.
Jojo  
Okay, so moving on. This is actually... I believe this is one of my last ones. I wanted to pull this because she's one of the few characters that kind of gets a little bit more screen time, other than the guy that drags Naomi Watts through the mud. And she actually does speak pretty fluent English, because she's one of the ones that finally kind of is able to converse with Lucas when he's trying to find... at a certain point in the hospital, he loses his mom temporarily. So she finally is able to converse with him and calm him down and try to help him find his mom again. And so she's kind of... it's still a really, really small role. And again, another big critique is that the local people just aren't given much of a character in this movie. But she ends up kind of having this big long conversation with him and she ends up kind of being his trustworthy, like, go-to nurse.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
So she has a very small part, but you do see her represented a little bit more. And I kind of just wanted to show, again, their uniform is clearly not pristine, like we are used to seeing in the States.
Sarah  
Right.
Jojo  
It's clearly like, this is the shirt that she got. And it's probably whatever "Goodwill" version that she got out of wherever she could find. And that's their uniform for the hospital.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
So I just thought that was interesting, to sort of represent kind of what the local people were wearing. And I didn't do enough research to find out how accurate this actually was.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
Or if this is just something she wore on her own, versus an actual, you know, hospital issued uniform.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
And then last one.. they talked about-- like, I just kind of pulled this image because again, they haven't really changed. But this is sort of where they finally find each other. And this is after a very long like hour and a half of the movie. So within that last half hour, Lucas finally finds his two brothers, and then they finally find their dad.
Sarah  
Aww.
Jojo  
So there was this really heartwarming moment. And again, it's sort of like a double edged sword, right? There's so many other people that die during the tsunami that aren't focused on in this movie. And yet, the white family is the one that survives. So I think that was one of the biggest critiques of this movie, of how whitewashed everything was.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
But you know, it's at the end of it, it's still a very heartwarming happy ending, I think. Unfortunately, audiences don't... well, I shouldn't say "unfortunately," but audiences don't really like to see a sad ending for things like this, where it is a natural disaster that's totally out of your control.
Sarah  
Right.
Jojo  
But it is also one of those things where, you know, it makes you wonder, what about all those other families that didn't make it? So... Yeah, anyways, that was the last thing I had for this movie. Again, a really hard thing to watch.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
But I did like that they at least brought the original survivor into the discussion and didn't just try and like, fake it or make something happen that wasn't really happening.
Sarah  
I feel like if I was making this movie, which... I don't make movies, so whatever. But I would probably try to tell a bunch of family's stories, you know?
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
Instead of... you can get the real life testimony from the survivors and try to do justice to their actual story.
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
But you could also add in some side characters who are on their own sort of struggle and journey, and maybe not all of them have happy endings, you know?
Jojo  
Yeah.
Sarah  
Like, you could tell the story in a way that was sensitive to the actual family who survived this. And then... but also sensitive to everybody else who didn't find their family.
Jojo  
Right. Which... I think, you know, they did do a little bit of that.
Sarah  
Yeah?
Jojo  
When Lucas is running through the hospital. Because while his mom is laying kind of in the hospital ready for surgery, he ends up... just because he doesn't know what to do with himself. So he ends up running around the hospital, and all these people end up reaching out to him and being like, you know, "have you seen this person?"
Sarah  
Mmm.
Jojo  
Like, most of them are parents asking for their sons, or their kids.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
And so he starts going around, he starts taking their names down, and walking around the hospital and just yelling out names, being like, "anybody recognize this name?" So there is a little bit of that, that I think they tried to throw in there to like, redeem some of it.
Sarah  
[laughs] Yeah.
Jojo  
But yeah, you know, it is one of those things where I think you see maybe two families reunite-- including that kid Daniel, who in real life, we never find out what actually happens to him. But there is another family who... the son and the father get reunited, because Lucas ends up finding him.
Sarah  
Mmhmm.
Jojo  
And then there's another mom who also goes, like... she has a similar situation and ends up having to go into surgery kind of right next to Maria's character. And you never find out what happens to her. Like, she goes into surgery. And she, I think she writes her name on Maria's arm, so that she won't forget her name, because she was like, "I have a family too. And I just want to say bye to them one last time before... I don't know if I'm going to survive this surgery," kind of thing.
Sarah  
Oh, wow.
Jojo  
And then she goes into surgery, and you never see her come back out. So you know, there's a lot of unfinished stories, which, you know, I think they tried to do that. Which is probably why this movie lasted two hours. Like, I forgot that that was long it was. [laughs] And I was like, "how are they going to make a movie about a tsunami last two hours?" [both laugh] But you know, they did it. So... so yes, it was interesting to see how they were able to kind of translate some of that. And like, show all of it. I think, you know, again, at the end of the day, I'm kind of like, "what was the reasoning behind switching to a white family when it didn't have to be done that way?"
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
Like, you know, it's one thing if you're resonating with that particular actress. But like, they could have even kept her husband, you know, Spanish. Or... I don't know, something like that.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
I'm not a filmmaker. So who knows? But...
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
...but yes, it does make me wonder what their choices are, what their motivations behind those choices were.
Sarah  
It's hard to justify that, you know, in a way that really makes a lot of sense. Other than...
Jojo  
Right.
Sarah  
"...we were worried about money. We were worried that people wouldn't pay to see a movie about people who weren't white," which is like... [grimace sound] [laughs]
Jojo  
Right. And then last fun fact I wanted to share was when they did the tsunami, apparently he built a water tank. And that's how they filmed the whole movie. I think it was very similar... I can't remember the other movie you said that they did that for. But there was another one.
Sarah  
"Parasite"?
Jojo  
Yes. Yeah.
Sarah  
Yeah, I just transcribed that one.
Jojo  
They built a water tank. And like, they just... you know, they kind of just did most of their swimming in there.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
And then they just added some digital, you know, extra effects or visual effects afterwards for the extra stuff. But I was like, "That's so crazy," because I can't imagine trying to film. He tried to use as much real water as possible, though.
Sarah  
Oh, wow.
Jojo  
He was like, "I wanted it to be as authentic as possible." So a lot of the tidal waves that come in, and things like that, all of that happened for real. And I was like, "yikes," that's... that's so crazy and scary. Like, I can't imagine.
Sarah  
Yes, I feel like that would be very hard. But also I think about actors and I'm like, "a movie where you're wet the whole time?" That just has to suck to shoot.
Jojo  
Yeah. [laughs] Yeah.
Sarah  
Just wet for two months.
Jojo  
And where you have to constantly change costumes, just to make sure you're continuous. Like...
Sarah  
They're like, dumping buckets on you before they start. Ugh.
Jojo  
Yep, yep. So yeah, must have been a very grueling process. For sure.
Sarah  
Yeah. Yeah.
Jojo  
But yeah, that's my coverage of "The Impossible."
Sarah  
Great job.
Jojo  
Thanks, Sarah.
Sarah  
I'm glad you covered that, because I am glad I know about that movie now. But that's the kind of movie that would stress me out deeply to watch. So now I got the experience of watching it without having to actually watch it. [both laugh]
Jojo  
So funny. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. I will definitely say, the scene where she reunites with her son--and she's trying to get back to him because they're so far apart--and they see each other and they're both screaming for each other, but they can't get close enough to each other. And there's a whole scene where they're reaching across a mattress, but they can't touch hands, because it's too far away. And they're still also trying to avoid debris under the water that they can't see. And I'm just like, "this is so stressful!" And I feel like I don't know what I'd do if this was me, and my parents. Or like, me and a child that I cared about. [laughs]
Sarah  
I hope we never have to find out what that's like.
Jojo  
Agreed. Agreed. [both laugh]
Sarah  
Oh, man.
Jojo  
But yes. So yeah, that's our coverage of true event movies.
Sarah  
Very different films we picked, from each other. [laughs]
Jojo  
Absolutely.
Sarah  
That's good. We like to keep it spicy. Keep it fresh.
Jojo  
That's true. It's very true.
Sarah  
Yeah.
Jojo  
Keep your interest peaked.
Sarah  
Exactly. [both laugh]
Jojo  
Oh, man. Well.
Sarah  
Okay.
Jojo  
Thank you so much, Sarah, that was so much fun.
Sarah  
Thank you, JoJo.
Jojo  
Thank you guys for joining us. And again, if you have any comments or questions or just other things you want to add, maybe more information about either of our movies that maybe we didn't cover, please feel free to add or comment on Instagram.
Sarah  
Yes! Totally.
Jojo  
We are behind on YouTube. So I will get back on that this week. Sorry. It's been a crazy month. But thank you for being patient with us.
Sarah  
Yes.
Jojo  
And we look forward to hearing all of your comments and notes and questions and everything else.
Sarah  
Yes, we appreciate your patience as we, you know, try to fit doing this podcast around our regular lives. [laughs]
Jojo  
So true. Well, thanks again and we'll see you on the next one.
Sarah  
See ya. Bye.
Jojo  
Bye!
[OUTRO]
Jojo
Thank you for listening to The Costume Plot! You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @thecostumeplot. If you have a question, comment, or movie suggestion you can email us at [email protected].
Sarah
Our theme music is by Jesse Timm, and our artwork is by Jojo Siu. Please rate and review us wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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aion-rsa · 3 years
Text
Army of the Dead: The Problem with Zack Snyder Song Choices
https://ift.tt/3hQSbwk
This article contains Army of the Dead spoilers. Read our spoiler-free review here.
No one has ever accused Zack Snyder of being subtle. As the director who once had Henry Cavill’s Superman and the image of Jesus Christ in red and blue stained glass share the same frame, Snyder’s a filmmaker who likes his subtexts to be written across the screen whenever possible, preferably in neon. It’s an impulse that can lead to sometimes stunning visuals, such as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Doctor Manhattan filming the moon landing in Watchmen, and it sometimes can be as heavy-handed as Bruce Wayne turning into a literal bat in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
In other words, Snyder is not one for a light touch when it comes to crafting his visuals… or the music which often accompanies them. And fans who checked out Army of the Dead this past weekend on Netflix were reminded of that latter fact when the director’s penchant for on-the-nose needle drops reached its head-scratching zenith: Snyder ends his zombie movie with the Cranberries’ “Zombie” playing in the background.
As a song written 1994 by Dolores O’Riordan, lead singer of the Cranberries, it seems like an awkward choice for this action-horror hybrid on multiple levels. Considered one of the best alternative rock anthems of the ‘90s, “Zombie” remains among the top tier protest songs of the last 30 years. It was written by an Irish rocker in defiance of then-recent violence implemented by the IRA in the UK, which left two English children dead. Yet here it is in Army of the Dead, playing in a finale where Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick) crawls through the ruins of Las Vegas and the remains of its zombie hordes, with tens of millions of dollars on his back.
For audiences who know the history of the song, it’s jarring; and for those who don’t it is still abrasively trite to have the denouement of their zombie movie conclude to the wails of “Zombie, zombie, zombie!”
But for aficionados of Snyder’s filmography, it’s perfectly in keeping with the filmmaker’s attention-grabbing (and often gaudy) musical choices. Sometimes they can work in favor of his movies and sometimes against—and occasionally in the same scene. No matter what, however, they always make you sit up and take notice.
Admittedly, the use of non-diegetic music in films—needle drops where the music comes over a scene and has no source, such as a radio or live band, on the screen—is subjective. There’s no one set of rules about how to best employ popular music in a movie. With that said, at their best needle drops can either complement or comment on the scene at hand. They can add to the emotion of a movie moment, such as the wistful piano exit of “Layla” playing as the gangsters all get whacked in Goodfellas, or they can challenge the images we see and the story we’re being told, like when Beethoven is used to chilling effect as Malcolm MacDowell’s allegedly refined Alex attacks his friends in A Clockwork Orange.
But at its heart, the good use of a song surprises the audience, often by getting into the emotion or headspace of a character on screen, or illuminating it with some level of abstract distance. Of course the more popular the song is, the more you run the risk of the music carrying baggage for the audience. In period pieces, this can actually be an asset, with each song choice able to evoke a sense of time and place for the audience, particularly if it’s in the audience’s living memory—for example, just about every late 1960s music sample in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood—but it also means filmmakers traditionally want to steer further afield from the most popular Top 40 songs, unless it legitimately comments on a character’s perspective, such as the Crystals’ wildly romantic “Then He Kissed Me” also in Goodfellas.
Snyder doesn’t appear to worry about any of these issues with the song choices in his films. Rather he seems to embrace the cinematic and pop culture baggage of many of his needle drops, wearing them like so much ostentatious jewelry while strutting down the strip. Once in a while they can have the intended effect, such as when he evokes the image of the Vietnam War in the popular imagination by using Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” in Watchmen, reminding audiences of the iconic union of that music with this conflict in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now while also commenting on how Vietnam is a different animal in the alternate history of Watchmen.
In most instances though, it just seems bizarrely under-thought, such as the inexplicable use of “The Sounds of Silence” also in Watchmen. The song is a Simon and Garfunkel standard which was famously written for The Graduate. So, genuinely, what is the point of that song being in Watchmen other than it sounds sad and was written in the ‘60s, and we’re now at the funeral of someone whose heyday was around that time? None of the characters onscreen actually liked the man they’re burying, and the piece just conjures up in the mind a much better movie which used that song with far more haunting nuance.
This drastic give-and-take in quality remains visible in Snyder’s Army of the Dead. Before the groan-inducing use of “Zombie,” Snyder rummages through Hollywood history again when he puts a cover of The Doors’ “The End” over the sequence where his team of casino robbers/zombie killers first enter the ruins of Las Vegas. The version in Army of the Dead is technically sung by The Raveonettes, instead of with Jim Morrison’s nihilistic groove, but it still inescapably conjures up images of Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Well before Huey helicopters doubled as Valkyries in that movie, Coppola opened the film like an LSD-laced fever dream, with a Vietnam era rock song about the sweet relief found in death.
In Apocalypse Now, the song immediately puts the viewer into the viewpoint of Martin Sheen’s Willard, a war ravaged soldier (or “errand boy”) who even during his time off in a Saigon hotel room cannot stop thinking about the fires of napalm and the whirl of helicopter blades. His vacation is just an impatient waiting game before getting back in the shit. The placement of the slow-motion images with the Doors’ song creates one of the most hypnotic and nihilistic opening sequences of the 1970s—and in a film that has withstood the decades to be considered an enduring classic. So to use that particular song so unironically in Army of the Dead is thus numbing because it appears to be a naked attempt to draw a line between the visual madness of Apocalypse Now with a fairly formulaic zombie movie.
The comparison is unflattering to Army of the Dead, yet it was entirely avoidable. Which makes its use all the more baffling, particularly as Snyder’s movie does have some smart music choices.
In fact, there is one unabashedly great needle drop in Army of the Dead, and as with several Snyder films before it, this occurs during the film’s opening credits. Early on in the Netflix release, we witness the fall of Las Vegas to the undead hordes in montage, experiencing in vignette the horror of seeing Sin City dragged through the mouth of Hell. During this sequence, an ironic use of “Viva Las Vegas” is played. Initially, this would seem to be another lazy choice, as using songs that feature the setting of a city can lead to something as uninspired as, well, just about every other movie that’s featured “Viva Las Vegas” and not starred Elvis Presley and Ann-Margret.
But in the case of Army of the Dead, Snyder makes the savvy choice of having Richard Cheese and Allison Crowe record a new cover of the Presley lounge act specifically for his movie. Cheese, a comedic and kitschy singer who made a career out of doing ironically swinging covers of pop songs or heavy metal anthems, previously appeared in Snyder’s last zombie movie, Dawn of the Dead. In that 2004 remake of the George A. Romero classic, Snyder deliciously used Cheese’s big band version of “Get Down with the Sickness,” a Disturbed head-banger about embracing disease and death. Yet with Cheese’s stylish vocalizations, it sounds downright jaunty over images of human survivors waiting around to die as the zombie horde outside continues to exponentially grow.
By having Cheese, as well as Crowe, offer a strangely more restrained version of Elvis’ goofy love letter to the city of sin, Army of the Dead brings the musical heritage of Vegas to the forefront while also destroying it on screen to a familiar song turned disaffected. It’s a legitimately clever sequence.
Perhaps that’s why the use of “Zombie” at the end of the film is so disappointing. Like characters having orgasms in Watchmen while Leonard Cohen bellows, “Hallelujah,” having the word “zombie” sung over the finale of your zombie apocalypse movie feels cheap and crass.
Of course if you scratch a little deeper at the scene in question, perhaps there is added meaning. After all, the Cranberries’ “Zombie” is an anti-war song about “your tanks, and your guns,” and at the end of Army of the Dead, Hardwick’s Vanderohe just survived the biggest weapon of war of all: a nuclear bomb. Is he perhaps surveying the carnage left by the nuke and thinking to himself, “the horror, the horror?”
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Snyder has publicly suggested it might be open to that interpretation. In an interview with Joe.ie, Snyder said, “I did it because it was literally the first song that I had on my playlist when I was writing the script. I would just listen to it and I just felt like because the movie is self-aware and ironic, and it kind of understands what it is—I really love that song because of its politics and importance.”
Snyder may acknowledge the political context (more off-screen than on), but I still don’t think the sequence works in that regard. Vanderohe is a mercenary of war and who has spent the whole film killing zombies. Now a nuclear bomb saved him from being trapped in a city overrun by zombies, while also making him a rich man. His eagerness to reach Mexico City and enjoy his newfound wealth does not suggest some enlightened epiphany by either the character or the film about the danger of militaristic annihilation. Rather it accompanies just another glib “twist” to a horror movie ending where at least one character thinks he’s safe and then—surprise—he’s not. You know, like Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead and pretty much every zombie movie going back to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead original (a film which did have plenty to say about the systemic horrors of the world with its ending).
The anti-war meaning of “Zombie” might add an extra layer to its use in Army of the Dead, but its lyrics about bombs still play as obvious, and thudding. It’s a shallow correlation being drawn by a film that’s too shallow to actually have anything to say on this subject matter, especially with less than 10 minutes of running time left.
Much like Hardwicke’s zombie bite at the end, Army of the Dead’s bad decisions leave permanent scars on the whole.
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auburnfamilynews · 4 years
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Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
Let’s talk centers.
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Photo by John Korduner/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Oh dear god no, not that center.
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John Reed-USA TODAY Sports
YES, much better.
#50 Austin Wiley - Senior, Birmingham, AL
Auburn brings back a veteran Austin Wiley for his senior season, which feels laughable when reading those words on my screen. The seven footer came to Auburn early and played the second half of the 2016-17 season as a high school senior. As a kid that year, Wiley still started all 18 conference games and averaged 8.8 points/4.8 rebounds per game. Wiley hit his peak in late January that year, when in a 3 game stretch (home vs Bama, at South Carolina and TCU) he averaged 18 points/9 rebounds.
Expectations were sky high for the Auburn legacy going into the 2017-18 season. Already one of the highest rated recruits Auburn had ever signed, he was going to get another year to develop with THE highest ranked recruit Auburn ever signed, Mustapha Heron. The team looked primed to finally climb out of the basement of the SEC, and led by Wiley and Heron, could they maybe make the tournament?
Today we learned that Austin Wiley and Danjel Purifoy were the two players connected to the Chuck Person investigation. This didn’t come as a shock to those who had followed the story and the Auburn basketball program. It was always going to be 2 of Auburn’s 3 NBA prospects, Danjel, Wiley, or Heron. It appears that Chuck Person paid $11,000 to Purifoy’s mother and $7,500 to Wiley’s mother.
On the morning of the exhibition against Berry, Auburn ruled Wiley and Purifoy ineligible indefinitely. As you all know by now, the two didn’t play at all in the 2017-18 campaign, despite the NCAA waiting ALL DAMN SEASON before ruling them officially ineligible, even though they ruled on a similar case for Collin Sexton and Alabama in early November. It was, to say the least infuriating.
After having his sophomore season stolen from him, Wiley was ready to come back and make a splash last season. However, leg injuries slowed him in the offseason, and lingered throughout the rest of the season. Wiley never truly got in a grove last season, and missed 9 games during conference play. After playing 22 minutes against Ole Miss as Auburn opened up conference play, Wiley never played more than 14 minutes in any game. He was never fully healthy in conference or post-season play, and added a dislocated thumb to his injury report to make matters worse. Wiley was effective when he played, but the eye test showed he was laboring. His final numbers show that in 13 minutes per game, Wiley averaged 6.9 points and 4 rebounds. His per 40 minutes stats, though, show him averaging 21.2 points/12.4 rebounds/3.9 blocks - all three numbers led the team. He also was a machine at getting to the line, averaging 9 FTA per 40 minutes. The next highest regular on the team was Jared Harper, with 5.5/40 min.
Interestingly enough, Wiley played probably his best career game against Duke last season, posting 17 points and 9 rebounds on 7-11 from the field. As Auburn struggled to get anything going inside, Bruce leaned on 3 point shooting from Jared and Bryce and paint points from Wiley to get the job done.
This is the kind of shot #50 needs to hit to be effective, as he lacks a true jump shot. He can use his size to body up defenders around the restricted area and create a clean look, but he was unable to do so when the injuries piled up later in the season. This highlight may not be the perfect example of what Wiley can do under the basket, but it has to be taken into account that the defender here is Zion Williamson. Not many guys in the country are going to be able to hold their ground against Wiley.
As Crow likes to mention on the Orange and True from time to time, peak Austin Wiley becomes a black hole for opposing defenses to deal with in the paint. As you can see in the previous highlight, Wiley is drawing the double team from Duke, with #5 RJ Barrett crashing in to help #20 Marques Bolden. A healthy Wiley is going to force teams to double him, and that’s going to leave shooters open outside for Auburn to take advantage of, like Bryce above. This season, I think you’ll see a lot of Danjel Purifoy being the guy taking advantage of open threes when defenders help on Austin.
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One of the things I’ll be looking for this year out of Wiley is how well he runs. If last year’s leg injuries slowed him as much as I think, getting him back to running the court and catching oops from J’Von McCormick will be a big plus to this offense. Also, I really wanted to share that highlight.
If you notice, the previous three highlights took place over the span of less than two game minutes. Wiley took over the game at this point for Auburn, and took what was looking to be a blowout for Duke and re-energized Auburn for the stretch run.
Wiley’s defense is nothing to be ignored, either. Last season, Wiley reeled in 18% of all available rebounds and blocked 13% of all opponent two-point attempts while he was on the floor. That block number isn’t 13% of all 2-points attempts against him directly - that’s 13% of all attempts against any defender on the floor. And if the average rebound% is 10% (since there are 10 players on the floor at any given time), Austin almost doubling that is a pretty respectable number. In the scrimmage against Eckerd, Wiley was feeling good enough to attempt (and complete) blocks out at the arc. If you can’t tell, I’m EXTREMELY excited to see Wiley on the court this season. If he can simply perform at pre-injury levels from last year, he’ll be a dominant force on the court. Any growth on that is gravy.
#13 Babatunde “Stretch” Akingbola - Freshman, Ogun, Nigeria
Backing up Wiley at center is a new face. Stretch was a bit of a mystery during the last few years, with visa issues preventing him from returning to the United States for his senior year of high school. He had previously attended McEachern High School in Atlanta during his junior year, where he played with Issac Okoro and Shariffe Cooper. Can you imagine that? Put yourself in the shoes of a kid at North Cobb High School, maybe you’ve grown up being the best basketball player in any team you’ve played on, maybe you’ve got some DII or low-level DI offers. And then you go play McEachern, who’s throwing three highly coveted recruits who end up committed to a Final Four team at you. It’s just not fair, man.
The only bit of live basketball I’ve seen out of Stretch was at the scrimmage against Eckerd, but he looked more than ready to be an SEC role player. He added 2 rebounds and 2 blocks in 8 minutes of play to go with a bucket in the paint and free throw made. He’s probably going to look a bit unpolished being a freshman and not having played high school ball last season, but he has been drawing praise from his teammates about his energy and vocal leadership while on the court. At 6’10” 240 lbs, he adds another big body that Auburn desperately needed the last few years.
Other Options
With the graduation of Horace Spencer, Anfernee McLemore will be the only other player with experience at the 5 on the roster. In fact, McLemore has the most experience at the 5, having started there the majority of the last few years. At a slightly smaller 6’7” 220 lbs, though, he will be asked to split time with Danjel Purifoy at power forward this season. He’s a more natural fit at the 4, where he can not have to worry about playing offense down low as much and play more defense against perimeter shooters than he would at the 5. I think ultimately that’s a net positive for him, as he can use his size and leaping instincts to block more shots outside than he can against guys bigger than him in the paint.
Ultimately, I expect Wiley and Stretch to play most of the minutes at the five this season. If foul trouble or injuries crop up, McLemore would be the next man up there. The size and depth Auburn has at the position has improved drastically over the last two seasons, though. They’ve come a long way since having to play Horace and Chuma there at the end of the 2018 season.
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