#lorr give me one more chance

[intjgodcomplex]

"Lord give me one more chance..."

#death note #light yagami #mihael keehl #misa amane #near #nate river #aesthetic #mello #l lawliet #l #light yagami moodbaord #light yagami aesthetic #lorr give me one more chance

[random-iz-stuff]

Analyzing how Zim (probably) fights:

Exactly what the title says. I’m analyzing how Zim would theoretically fight someone in the absolutely optimal conditions. Zim gets to use any weapon that he would normally have on his person and he’s not fighting a worthy opponent like Dib or another Zim from the Zimvoid as Zim goes easy on those people (however, he could theoretically fight like this against Tak, because despite her being a worthy opponent, she’s close enough to Zim in skill that he doesn’t go easy on her).

I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but Nickelodeon All Star Brawl shows a really good example of how Zim fights.

Here’s his full moveset in that game.

PAK:

As you probably noticed, Zim uses his PAK legs in a lot of his moves, along with using them to support his body during the entire match. He also uses his PAK legs a lot in his fights in the show, mostly using them to gain more maneuverability and do things like dodge and launch himself in various directions.

And that makes sense considering that he’s an Irken that’s been trained to use these things (including in combat) practically since birth and is a former soldier. If you have access to metallic spider legs that give you extreme maneuverability in combat, you use them in combat.

So Zim would (and does) use his PAK legs a lot in combat, just like any other Irken, using them for maneuverability and faster movement along with raw attacking power by jabbing, slashing and using his PAK lasers, not to mention the other weapons and tools in there that he could use like the deflector shield and grappling hook.

Shock Spears:

Next, I want to talk about Shock Spears. The electric spears that Irkens use. Thanks to Nickelodeon All Star Brawl, we know that Zim doesn’t just know how to use a Shock Spear, he has his own unique one. (Which isn’t that surprising when you take into account the evidence that all Shock Spears are slightly unique and may be created by the wielder. (This also brings up the possibility that Sizz-Lorr’s giant spatula is actually a Shock Spear that Sizz-Lorr made himself, but that’s a different post)).

This is what Zim’s Shock Spear looks like (image courtesy of me after I dug through NASB’s code to find it). The left image is Zim’s Shock Spear and the right image is generally what the other spears we see in the show look like:

So Zim obviously knows how to use a Shock Spear in combat, however one might be used (I say it’s a mix between using a spear and a halberd), even though we never see him using one in the show. I imagine that in an optimal scenario where he has access to his Shock Spear and isn’t fighting someone he’d normally go easy on, he’d be a lot more willing to use it.

Now onto a thing that starts on its own, but eventually comes back to Zim’s Shock Spear:

Knife Throwing:

(I’m sorry but all I have for this is Dio because he’s the first person that comes to mind when I think of knife throwing)

Zim CANONICALLY has borderline Olympic skills with throwing knives with an accuracy of 99.7%. We learn this during the Zimvoid arc of the comics.

Technically Zim has extreme accuracy with “Vibrating Irken Death Blades”, but it’s implied that these are just high tech Irken throwing knives.

I want to just point out that with an accuracy of 99.7%, Zim could throw one thousand knives and only miss three.

With that in mind, there’s no way in hell that Zim doesn’t carry at least a dozen throwing knives in his PAK at all times. Say what you want about Zim, he’s shown that he’s more than smart enough to recognize strengths like that and capitalize on them.

I’m willing to bet that the only reason we didn’t get Zim throwing knives in NASB is because they didn’t want Zim throwing actual knives in a children’s fighting game. If the people who made NASB knew about and cared enough to give Zim a Shock Spear, let alone a unique one, at least one person on the team definitely knew about his knife throwing accuracy.

And there’s a good chance that Zim’s extreme accuracy doesn’t just apply to knives. His aim probably isn’t nearly as good with other objects as it with knives, but I’m willing to bet that if Zim can throw something, he’s got at least a 98% in accuracy with it. This applies to everything from small rocks to baseballs to grenades. If Zim can see you, you are in throwing distance of Zim.

How does this connect back to Zim’s Shock Spear you may ask? Because Zim’s Shock Spear has a very unique design and I have a headcanon as to why.

The end of Zim’s Shock Spear is covered by four blue parts that aren’t found on any other Shock Spear.

What they do is unknown, but I have an idea.

A headcanon of mine is that Shock Spears are retractable, being able to go from the size of the wielder to about the size of an unlit lightsaber that can be strapped an Irken’s belt or easily stored in a PAK. (This isn’t originally why I made the headcanon, but it could explain where Zim pulls out and stores his Shock Spear in NASB).

So a headcanon that sort of branches off of that is: “what if the blades of Zim’s Shock Spear were detachable as well?”. On Zim’s command, the blades of his Shock Spear can detach from the main spear and reconfigure themselves into daggers, giving Zim two Shock Knives and one retractable metal pole.

This is where the blue things on Zim’s spear come into play. Without the blades getting in the way, the blue things can be electrified and used to hit the opponent, turning the otherwise useless metal pole into a Shock Mace.

Zim seems to be more skilled with knives than a Shock Spear, so it would make sense for him to be able to take his Shock Spear and turn it into two knives that he can dual wield. The remaining pole still being useable as a mace means that even if he loses the knives (which is sort of to be expected considering that his whole deal with knives involves throwing them), he still has a weapon he can use.

Hell, he may even be able to use Irken technology in the Shock Mace and Shock Knives to recall the knives back to the mace (and therefore Zim, who’s currently holding it) after they’ve been detached and thrown. Even if the Mace is in its completely retracted form, the knives will fly back to the location of the mace and Zim can grab them again.

Also I can picture a scene where Zim and Dib are about to fight something together and Zim takes out his Shock Spear, detaches the blades, and tosses the now-Shock Mace to Dib while he dual wields Shock Knives.

Now, the single most important part of how Zim fights:

Zim’s Fighting Style:

I made a whole post about this before, but Zim uses his mind a lot more than his fists when he’s fighting.

What I mean by that is; Zim’s main strategies when fighting usually involve using the environment to his advantage.

For my best example of this you have Zim’s battle against Giganto-Baby in Plague Of Babies, where Zim immediately starts the fight by leaping to the ceiling and dropping a massive piece of machinery on Giganto-Baby, knowing that although he can’t beat Giganto-Baby on his own, the force of the heavy machinery falling on him might do the trick. When that doesn’t work, Zim leads Giganto-Baby through a large amount of cables, trying to get Giganto-Baby tied up in them. And when THAT doesn’t work, Zim goes for the amplifier.

Another trick Zim pulls frequently is briefly getting into his opponents heads, usually without them even noticing that he did it.

My best example here is Zim’s fight against Sergeant Hobo 678. In that fight, Zim is almost thrown out of the ring, but plays dumb and manages to distract the Sergeant with his interrupting “perhaps you have trained me too well” quote, throwing off the Sergeant’s concentration and giving Zim the time he needs to fully drain Sergeant Hobo 678 of his energy.

Another example is found in the pilot episode. In the fight against Dib, Zim grinds the fight to a halt to ask “What planet is this?” and when a now confused and distracted Dib replies with “Earth”, Zim takes advantage of Dib’s now distracted state to say “yep. It’s the right planet.” before leaping behind Dib and shooting him in the back. It IS the pilot episode so it’s not exactly canon, but it is worth bringing it up.

Also adding more proof to both Zim using the environment as a main part of his fighting style and my personal theory that at least one person on the Nickelodeon All Star Brawl dev team wrote their fucking college essay on Invader Zim is the fact that in NASB, Zim is a trapper type character, with a moveset focused on using traps and the environment to win fights.

So that plays a LOT into how both how Zim fights and what he uses in combat.

Speaking of what Zim uses in combat, grenades and bombs. Zim definitely knows how to use them and definitely WOULD use them because grenades and especially remote bombs play right into that environmental/trapper fighting style. Zim likes using the environment to his advantage, and remote activated bombs combined with Zim’s extreme throwing accuracy would let Zim control the environment practically to a tee, with Zim being able to toss explosives to whatever spot he wants and then detonate those explosives right when he needs it.

Zim would also carry multiple different kinds of explosives and explosive-like devices with multiple different purposes. We sort of see this in NASB where Zim has and uses three (at least technically three) different bombs, those bombs being Gir, who walks forwards and explodes when he hits a target and can be commanded to stop or continue moving, a garden gnome that floats in the air and electrifies anything nearby and a regular impact bomb that Zim drops during his recovery move. Point is, Zim can and would carry a few different kinds of bombs and similar devices, both traditional military and self-made.

Remote explosives are obvious and so are regular grenades, but Zim could also carry things like:

Bombs that hover in place in the air instead of falling to the ground

Bombs that lock onto and home in on a target after being thrown

Devices that electrify the area around them like the garden gnome from NASB (it would probably look different than the gnome because I doubt Zim would just carry around and use a garden gnome outside of Nickelodeon All Star Brawl and maybe one scenario where he’s forced to fight using one of his garden gnome base turrets as a weapon)

Explosives that detonate in unique ways, like something that explodes like the X-Bomb from Smash Bros Ultimate.

All of this variety lets Zim control the environment even better, as now he has multiple options for trapping areas. We know he’s smart enough to recognize these strengths and he’s definitely smart enough to create unique bombs and similar devices, so there’s no reason that Zim wouldn’t use multiple different bombs and explosives in combat.

Guns:

Also fitting in with Zim’s usage of the environment in combat alongside his usage of knives, if Zim were to use a gun, Zim would probably prefer using a small gun that can be pulled out, aimed and used rather quickly, like a pistol. As a trained soldier Zim would know how to use larger guns of all shapes and sizes from machine guns to snipers and would probably use them if the situation called for it and he had access to one, but he’d do best with something that can be pulled out and used quickly without much fuss.

Plus with something like a pistol, Zim could quickly and easily pull it out and aim for something in the environment like he tends to do in combat. He could do something like shoot a chandelier that’s above his opponent so it falls on them. In he used a larger gun like a machine gun or sniper, it would take far longer to pull out and use, losing its effectiveness when used in this way.

TLDR under the cut:

Zim’s fighting style:

Uses the environment and his mind a lot in combat, using traps, manipulating the environment and briefly getting into his opponents heads to distract and confuse them.

Uses his PAK legs a lot, primarily using them for extra maneuverability and dodging attacks, but also fully knowing how to attack with them.

Also has access to various tools, devices and weapons in his PAK that can and will be used.

Main weapon is 100% knives and/or daggers, especially throwing knives as Zim has a 99.7% accuracy rate.

Owns and uses a Shock Spear. (Pure headcanon: That Shock Spear can split into two Shock Knives (which Zim dual wields) and a Shock Mace meant to be used as a backup weapon. The Shock Knives can also be recalled to the location of the mace.)

Would use a lot of different bombs and similar devices (most of which are detonated remotely by a detonator Zim has on him or using his PAK) to better control the environment and gain an upper hand.

Would probably prefer a small gun that’s quick to use like a pistol.

Zim’s ideal combat gear (not including things like the armour he dons during Planet Jackers, Zim’s PAK (because he always has it on) or Gir and Minimoose (as they count as outside help here)):

Shock Spear (Headcanon: can split into two Shock Knives and a Shock Mace)

At least a dozen throwing knives, possibly more

Various bombs and devices that can be thrown out and activated when Zim needs them

One detonator for the above bombs and devices, possibly more

A few non-remote detonated explosives like timed or impact grenades

An Irken pistol

#invader zim #headcanons #analysis #zim #nickelodeon all star brawl #this exact post is why I spent four days trying to export the files from NASB #I knew Zim had a Shock Spear and I needed an HD picture of it

[peterlorrefanpage]

"You're not very polite today."

I've posted this clip before, but it is among one of my favorite scenes in a Peter Lorre movie. From "All Through the Night":

Such a pleasant tenor voice ba-da-bum-bumming, what could be more charming, more natural, than this handsome dapper man humming next to a popcorn machine on a fine day? What indeed

The way he just strolls into the shop like he was just passing by and thought he'd drop in

Mimicking Papa Miller like oh ha ha such larks we're old chums yes yes

The way his accent comes in a little stronger at the end of "You're not very polite today" thrills me every time

"Look, the candies I like, I'll have a few, you won't mind" and touching every goddamn thing in the shop

The eyes so watchful so calculating so deep

Still so reasonable at this point, we're all in this together, old pal old chum old comrade

Watchfulness increasing

Sauntering after Papa Miller, ba-da-bum-bum-bum-bum, then the silence and the infinitesimal pause, the eyes of him, that moment oh so gorgeous

The smile, the friendly lilt in his voice, the turning away when asking Papa Miller about the information, genius decision there

All the while the beast is coiling

Perhaps not entirely surprised at Papa Miller's decision, no, perhaps not surprised at all

Voice still light but now with a little edge beneath it, the eyes growing starker, the full lips straightening

The quick look behind to make sure no one has come in -

So friendly still, merely giving a warning, a chance he already knows Papa Miller won't take

And then the eyes grow cold, merciless

RIP, Papa Miller

#god I love this movie #All Through the Night #peter lorre #pepi #warner bros #comedy crime drama #world war II

[soapkaars]

I'm searching a few ideas to characterize a Dutchman who migrated to the United States in 1933 and accidentally found a job in Hollywood (the current year being 1941 - this man just had his breakout role). He has a story pretty similar to Lorre's and his persona is largely inspired by his role in "The Mask of Dimitrios". Do you have, by chance, any interesting suggestion?

Sorry I made you wait! Ooh this is a tough one. So you're talking about a professor van Leyden type?

It really depends on what exactly you're looking for or what you want to tell. If you're looking for a reason a Dutch person may find themselves in the US, it might be for a number of reasons - from the more familiar (star-struck, wanting to make it big in pictures) to the mundane (set up a farm in Iowa, immigrating to avoid tax collection and/or debts) to the spicy (political dissident - anticolonialist fighting against Dutch occupation of Indonesia).

If you're looking for a 'typical' background of a Dutch person similar to Lorre's character for Van Leyden, there's a lot you can do. Cornelis*/Cornelius may live in Amsterdam, but wouldn't come from there originally, as many Dutch people tend to move from the countryside to the city (literally, from the East of the country to the West of the country, which is where the more urban areas are) to develop themselves, look for more intellectual pursuits and/or opportunities, etc. My personal headcanon for van Leyden has always been that he was born somewhere near Amersfoort from German-Jewish immigrant parents and he moved to the slightly more tolerant city of Amsterdam to escape the oppressive black stocking-wearing Calvinist communities back home.

If you want to know the broad strokes of what defines a Dutch person and makes them different from an Englishman or a German person, a rough stereotype you could use to build off on or contrast your character to: We're a tiny country not just in how much physical square meters we have (three hours travel is long for a Dutch person!) but also in attitudes. I say this as a Dutchman myself: there's a very provincial/country bumpkin way of being that gives a lot of Dutch people a weird naiveté and bluntness compared to their European counterparts. There's the classic 'you don't get to be the boss of me!' that you find a lot with Dutch people - it's not that we're so anti-authoritarian (we do still have a monarchy, for example) but there's a huge distaste for formal and external displays of status in favour for more subtle displays. Also Dutch people are like German people in the sense that we're very protocol driven and we want to do everything 'by the book' - there's a strong sense of 'we all agreed to do it this way, so there's no use in doing it differently' and a lot of Dutch people I know can genuinely get very upset when other people don't do it in the specific way they think is 'correct'.

A person like Cornelius van Leyden probably would be a bit of an odd duck in Dutch society. Which is why he's living in Amsterdam! That city used to be (and still is, in my opinion, but way too expensive now) one of the few cities where there was a more lax way of being in comparison to the rest of the country. A lot of Dutch stereotypes non-Dutch people have come from there! In comparison to Amsterdam the rest of the country is much more strict and less open (with the exception of The Hague, but I come from there so I'm biased). We have a sort of division of the country where there's the 'randstad' (Edge City - Amsterdam, Leiden, The Hague, Rotterdam, and Utrecht - a very urbanised area where most of the wealth and finances used to be historically, and where more open attitudes used to flourish) and everywhere else (generally referred to as 'The East', 'the provinces', or 'the countryside' - all of which aren't very accurate names, but most Dutch people will know that you're referring to anyone who isn't from the Randstad)

Anyways, let me know if you were looking for something specific, and if this ramble was useful to you in any way!

*I always tend to 'correct' Cornelius' name to the more common 'Cornelis'! Also I used to know a guy called Cornelis and he hated it when we called him 'Corny'

#ask soap #dutchcore

[cogbreath]

wow.

Kunal Nayyar: When the show got picked up, I read about it on Deadline Hollywood. No one had called to tell me. I reached out to Simon and he said, “Listen, I don’t know what’s going on. The show’s picked up. They’ve just booked my flight to New York. I leave tomorrow; I’m sure they’ll be calling you.” And that whole night, I waited and waited, and no one called. My agent was trying to find what was going on. CBS had flown all four cast members to New York for the upfronts except for me, and I thought, Huh. I wonder if I’ll just be recast. At that time, CBS had not picked up my option on the show. They had until June 30, and it was only May. To make matters even more difficult, my visa was going to expire in two months. I didn’t have a work visa; I didn’t know what was going on. I was starting to think if this doesn’t work out, I’ll go home and work in India. That was the reality of the situation.

Chuck Lorre: When I landed in New York for the upfronts, I was informed that Kunal wasn’t there. I was like, “What do you mean he isn’t here? Why isn’t he here?” Apparently while I was flying across the country, a CBS executive determined—unilaterally—that Kunal wasn’t right for the role and we would recast that part. Well, I did not respond well. I was furious. They made this decision without consulting me. Plus, if you go back and watch the pilot, we didn’t really give him much of a chance in that episode.

It wasn’t because Kunal didn’t deliver, it was because we still hadn’t quite landed on his character. I called the execs at CBS and said, “You can’t fire him. I cast him, I believe in him, I’ll take responsibility for this decision. He’s my guy.” If I’m going to fail, I’m going to fail on my own choices. I’m not going to fail on someone else’s choices. I wasn’t about to recast that part because someone else made a decision. It seemed so unfair to cut the actor from the series based on what—the two lines where he whispered to Wolowitz?

[valdarian]

Invader Zim- Infinite Pink: Prologue (1)

WARNING/DISCLAIMER: This fic is intended for a mature audience and will be covering some traumatic topics that could be triggering. Please be advised! 

Read with caution! 

-Major Character death is temporary and only used in prologue.

-This fic is likely to make some uncomfortable or potentially be triggering. -It is intended for mature audiences, as it will be exploring dark and mature themes and situations. Such as violence, implied/attempted sexual assault and abuse. Non-con/dub-con warnings apply. I will try not to go into too much graphical details, however be warned it will be implied or referenced. -The events in this story are entirely fictional and merely done for dramatic effect. However, they are not intended to poke fun or downplay the real-life seriousness of these issues in anyway.

-I always try to include additional warnings in my author notes before each chapter.

WARNINGS OVER.

Stay safe!

===============================

SUMMARY: Zim’s trial was a victory for Irken society, their biggest thorn finally defeated for good. Zim’s soul reflects on his life and actions from the great beyond. 

When a second chance presents itself; Will he achieve his happy ending or wind up like he did before? Fighting against impossible odds, unraveling mysteries and discovering what lies beneath. Secrets will be revealed. What truth awaits?

===============================

NOTES: 

-Prazr is supposed to be slow burn endgame pairing.

-No Dib/mission to invade Earth (I don’t plan on exploring it) in this fic, besides small past references. 

-Instead it will be focused more on Irk and her history/society. Like Zim’s Academy/elite days.

-It’s been years since I’ve wrote a proper story, so please don’t mind the writing if it’s a bit weird in some places. I’ve had this plot stuck in my head for about a year. Inspired by my obsessed with Isekai/reincarnation/do-over manga and fics.

-If others want to use this as a base for their own story or art, that’s fine. Just tag me, I’d love to see what you do!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(The Abyss: Undetermined time after The Trial)

Zim floated endlessly in darkness, surrounded only by a feeling of a bygone age.

His body, the only thing visible as far as the eye could see. Was as bare as the day he was born, not even a PAK attached. 

Any Irken caught like this would be ridiculed for such degeneracy. Yet, he could not muster much shame. Only hugging his knees tighter to his chest.

He had nothing to show the passage of time. Only a half remembered feeling of what it was to be alive. Left alone in the Abyss with only his own thoughts and distant memories as company.

How long had he been here? Minutes, cycles...Eons?

Was this what death truly felt like? All alone and tormented by his life on replay.

Forever wondering what had went wrong.

He had been angry at first. Enraged at the thoughts of his trial and execution.

How dare they do this to him, to ZIM! He hadn't done anything to deserve this!

The pain of PAK removal was one of the few things still fresh in his mind.

He had cursed the hoomans and their filthy planet, the dib-beast for always interfering in his plans. As well as a long list of others for his fate. Just about anyone and everyone he could remember. No matter how insignificant they had played a role in his life.

His rage had burned without an end in sight. Who had he angered to endure such disgrace! Who did they think they were to put him through such humiliation? 

The names had slipped past his lips before he could stop them.

The Almighty Tallest.

His tirade had halted immediately. Appalled at his renegade of a mouth.

What traitorous thoughts! 

The propaganda and teachings of the Empire still deeply ingrained within his mind.

Yet, the more he had thought about them, the more his rage started to burn again. Turning into a blaze of discontent and resentment.

The Tallest had used him!

They were no more innocent then he!

Just as the Empire had designed them to. Zim had only been doing what any Irken soldier would've done...right? They were taught to love destruction and mayhem. How could he ever be the one in the wrong? Was not that, the purpose the Control Brains gave them?

He was only doing his duty.

What right did they have to punish him then!

Was not it the Tallest who had forced him to pilot during Operation Impending Doom? 

They hadn’t even asked what had caused the disaster. Why he had done what he did. Not that he could’ve answered them. Even now, that time is nothing but a distant haze at best. 

Still, they had never tried to find out what had went wrong. Only sending him to suffer on Foodcourtia under the sadistic Sizz-Lorr.

Did they like seeing him in pain? Did they enjoy seeing him unable to fight against them, even when they continued to ridicule him. Pushing him ever closer to his breaking point?

Like when they had sent him to that treacherous death-world known as Urth.

No! His body had shook in anger.

No, no. 

The truth was that they had sent him into the deep recess of space, hoping he would die.

He had turned a blind eye to all their misdeeds against him. 

For so long...too long, he realizes now. 

Letting his feelings blind him.  Everything had just felt so...so right with them. He had clung to a smeethood friendship. To long buried feelings that he swore they shared, but could not speak of. 

Had he really been that delusional?

They had been friends once, close ones. It had been an instant connection. One he thought would last the test of time. Since their days in the Academy, they had spent practically every waking moment by each other’s sides. Years spent studying, training and completing assignments together. Even graduated as elites with one another.  

He had cared about them, more than he could ever put into words. He had thought they had cared about him too.

Maybe they had one point...Until their love of status won out.

Zim had always known about their dreams of grandeur. But, had ignored it. Convincing himself, that no matter what, they would never abandon him. That they still cared for him...even if only a little.

Yet, time and time again he was proven wrong. 

Unwilling to accept the truth. His own delusions gladly filling in the blanks. They were ultimately the same as him, obviously. Only doing what the Empire wanted. What the Control Brains wanted. 

This was all an...act...There was no way they actually hated him. It was...a test! A test of his faith, of his will...of his love. No matter what, he couldn’t fail. He needed to prove himself to them. Maybe then...

What a pitiful creature he had been.

So much so, he had even done something as primitive as pray to the ancient Gods. Hoping that one day...

He really was delusional. The crazed mess everyone believed him to be.

After all, what Irken in their right mind, would ever want to be seen with such a tiny smaller? 

Yet, in the end he had still loved them. Even now his cardiac-spooch aches for them.

They had hurt him, but he had hurt them too.  He hates them, he loves them, he hates them, he loves them...

He doesn’t know what to think about them anymore.

After some time, his anger had eventually moved on. 

To the only ones left.

The Control Brains.

The machines who claimed to control everything. If they were truly such omnipotent beings, then surely they had to have known his PAK was defective! They dictated everything about Irken lives after all, from what they wore, to their careers and everything in-between. 

Then why was only he to blame!

Were not they the ones that programed him this way!

If he had been such a threat to the empire, if his PAK had so many errors, then why didn't they fix it!

Why had he been the only one to be punished!

If he was so broken, then why couldn't they have just fixed him!

…and just like that, the flames had been snuffed out. He had been quiet for a few minutes...hours...or maybe even days. Dwelling only on that single thought alone.

A sob had left him as the realization came crashing down.

Only then had he finally blame himself. A deep well of shame had quickly bubbling within him.

Over two hundred cycles, years devoted to serving the Armada. Bowing to the strict rules of the Empire and whims of his Tallest. Placing his loyalty to Irk above all else. Rejecting his natural inclinations. Forever trying to hid his perceived weaknesses.

It all amounted to what exactly?

He was defective. A mistake. A problem to be remedied and swept under a rug to be forgotten.

He was only capable of needlessly destroying everything in his path, even himself.

Forever trying to be something he wasn't.

While Silently pleading, hoping beyond hope someone would give him the attention...the love that he so desired. His peers would recognize him and appreciate him.

Irk was sure to celebrate his death for cycles to come.

It's not that he hadn't tried to control his urges. He had tried, he really did. To be the perfect soldier, to be the prime Irken example.

But, at his core, that not who he was. Despite how much he had tried to make himself to be so.

Luck was as much his friend as it was his enemy.

In a society were one was not to step out of line, not to break any mold, to do only what they were told. Someone like him, could only double down. Hoping that maybe this time something would go right. If only he kept trying it wouldn't be considered failure. Something would have to work eventually, right? He hadn't been kicked out of the collective yet. So that meant there was still hope.

What a fool he had been. 

Chaos incarnate many called him. The name Zim was synonymous with destruction and failure. He had no glory, no honor. He was nothing but a devil to his own people, an omen of their death.

By the Gods, if he could just go back! 

His hands clench at the thought.

Would things be different? Could he make different choices. 

Even if his loyalty came into question? If he walked a different road then that of the perfect little Irken. 

Would he even be capable of such a thing?

He doesn’t know.

If only he had tried a little hard to control himself. If he could just be given another chance to prove himself. If to no one else, but to him. If he could just have a chance to live life how he truly wanted.

If only he could start over. If only...

A humorless laugh leaves him. Who would even give him the time of day? To him of all Irken?

As if.

His Empire had denounced him. His people had forsaken him. He had nothing left.

Magenta eyes stare blankly into the expansive darkness. They close as he  buries his face into his knees, lamenting his fate.

Truly this couldn't have been a more fitting punishment for someone as despicable as him.

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Cover Art: https://valdarian.tumblr.com/post/643477875611271168/cover-art-for-my-invader-zim-fanfic-infinite

OC ART:https://valdarian.tumblr.com/post/643603226310148096/just-a-few-of-my-oc-that-appear-in-infinite-pink

MAP of IRK: https://valdarian.tumblr.com/post/644055524128735232/guess-who-found-a-world-map-maker-its

Next chapter:

https://valdarian.tumblr.com/post/640238150925598720/invader-zim-infinite-pink-ch1

#PRaZr #zim razr #pazr #almighty tallest #tallest purple #Tallest Red #invader zim #Infinite pink AU #Zim

[chiseler]

Hammett Made It Easy

To put it bluntly, it is simply, humanly impossible to watch Roy Del Ruth’s original 1931 film version of The Maltese Falcon without drawing comparisons and parallels with John Huston’s much more popular (if not exactly “timeless”) version from a decade later. After all, in many fundamental ways the films are a nearly identical match, scene for scene and line for line. Almost, anyway. Enough so that you’d notice.

The fault for this lies squarely on the shoulders of author Dashiell Hammett. whose 1930 novel made straying from the original source material extremely difficult. The sharp dialogue, the snappy pacing, and the already cinematic scene structure are all so very good that there was little reason to go messing with it. In fact, as the story goes, when screenwriter John Huston made the decision to move into directing, Howard Hawks gave him a copy of the book as a potential first project shortly before Huston left on a vacation. Huston handed the book to his secretary and told her to type it up in script format. She did, and it was that initial version straight from the book that was green-lighted by the studio—even before Huston had had a chance to read it.

Huston later made a few minor changes and additions, but one has to wonder if ten years earlier screenwriters Maude Fulton and Brown Holmes didn’t work much the same way, given how much of the 1931 film’s dialogue reappears verbatim in Huston’s—with the notable exception of the Shakespeare quote that closes the latter (a line supposedly suggested by Humphrey Bogart).

Granted, Huston’s film runs twenty minutes longer than Del Ruth’s spiffy 80-minute number (for a number of reasons, including a much larger role for the hapless gunsel Wilmer and an extended final sequence), but nevertheless if you remove the script from the equation, comparing the two films becomes much easier. At that point the remaining important factors are the directors and their styles, and the casts and their performances.

By 1931, Del Ruth was already well underway in a directing career that would find him making comedies, musicals, dramas, Westerns, and even the occasional horror film. Although comedies were his real forte (he would soon direct Lee Tracy in Blessed Event), taking on something like the Hammett novel was not that unusual. He was not a particularly remarkable director, and stylistically his films resembled most other standard films of the day. The scenes were quick, the camera was static, he didn’t have much time for pizzazz. As was the case of so many of the films of the era, his pictures often resembled filmed stage plays. He was on a tight schedule, and as soon as he finished one he had to be on to the next in a couple days. In the end he crafted an entertaining, well-told story, and that’s all the studio and audiences were looking for.

Meanwhile, The Maltese Falcon was going to be Huston’s directorial debut after having solidly established himself as a respected screenwriter. Some of the suits at Warner Brothers were hesitant to let him make the leap, so he had to prove to them he could do it, and approached the film with the kind of energy and big ideas you find with so many first-time directors. Although the film wasn’t as flashy and inventive as Citizen Kane, Huston did pull out a few tricks, like the famed seven-minute take, and the camera work was fluid and energetic. Even if audiences didn’t notice a number of his little flourishes, it was still a very confident film. More importantly, it was an entertaining, well-told story—and that’s what the studio and audiences were really looking for.

(It’s worth noting, however, that Huston’s version was much tamer than Del Ruth’s—perhaps for obvious reasons. In Del Ruth’s version there’s no pussyfooting around the fact that Sam Spade really is having an affair with his partner’s wife. Nor is there any question what happens after Spade accuses Ruth Wonderly/ Brigid O'Shaughnessy of only using money to buy his allegiance.)

What Huston really had on his side was, if not star power exactly, then at least a handful of familiar faces. It might have been Sydney Greenstreet’s film debut, but audiences certainly recognized Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook, and Bogart. Up until this point of course Bogart had only been a character player, but his star was definitely on the rise, and broke with this film.

Del Ruth, on the other hand, was working with an armload of good, available B actors. Most of them worked regularly, but they weren’t exactly Joan Blondell or Douglas Fairbanks.

It’s in looking at the performances of the two groups that the real differences between the films arises. Take the character of Sam Spade, for instance. Bogart’s performance as the womanizing, sharp tongued private dick always struck me as stiff and stagey—you can almost hear him thinking of each gesture before he makes it, and each line before he speaks it. There’s something tangibly artificial in his performance, the feeling that we really are watching an actor, and moreover one who’s not trying very hard.  Or maybe one who’s letting his stage training get the better of him, thinking the dialogue alone will carry the day. I of course love Bogart, just not here, particularly.

Ricardo Cortez (in reality the NYC-born son of Austrian immigrants) portrayed a much looser, more easy-going Spade, always ready with a quip and forever chasing skirts. He gives a much more relaxed performance that often borders on the straight comic. In spite of the fact that Cortez is much more comfortable in the role, it seems, his Spade is almost out of place here, smirking his way through a double murder investigation.

Seen today, Greenstreet’s   Gutman seems so unique a performance that it immediately became iconic, and a character and performing style he would go on to recreate for the rest of his career. It seems unique anyway, until you see Dudley Digges Gutman from a decade earlier. The similarities between the two performances are shocking. The intonation, vocal tones, the side mutterings, the laughter, the gestures, even the facial expressions are so nearly identical it’s almost as if Greenstreet studied  Digges’ performance closely and decided to recreate it for the remake. Strange thing is, for American character actor Digges, it was a unique role quite unlike anything else he’d played before or would play again. Unless you care to argue that the spirit of the true Kasper Gutman inhabited both actors (and then stayed in Greenstreet), it’s a mighty remarkable coincidence.

One of the more interesting distinctions can be seen in the character of Spade’s secretary, Effie Perine, and more specifically it boils down to a single line reading.

In one of the first and most famous lines of the film, Effie informs Spade that a new client is waiting to see him. In the Huston version, bubbly Lee Patrick says, “You’ll wan to see this one anyway—she’s a knockout!” She seems awfully enthusiastic about it, happy to encourage her boss’s assorted flings. It seems a little odd, but then she spends the rest of the film running errands for Spade and we never give her another thought.

In Del Ruth’s version,  Una Merkel’s Effie does not smile and does not chirp when she says dourly, “You’ll want to see this one anyway. She’s a knockout.”  There’s so much stifled bitterness, frustration, and jealousy in the line that we can read her entire character—almost her whole life—in those few words. And for the rest of the film, whenever Spade asks her to run another errand or do another favor, we know what she’s thinking when she agrees. Thanks to Merkel, Effie becomes the one honestly tragic figure in the entire story, with the possible exception of Wilmer.

As Gutman’s henchman and punk, far be it from me to compare anyone with the great Elisha Cook, Jr.—unless of course it’s the equally great Dwight Frye. Sadly Frye has been given very little to do here except look sullen and angry. In fact he’s only been given a single line of dialogue (“I’ll fog him”). Still, he’s always fun to watch—though admittedly not as much fun here as Cook, who gets to give Bogart a vicious kick in the head.

In the end and over time, the choice of which, if either, version is superior is a simple matter of taste. It does become easier to understand, though, why in the 1950s Del Ruth’s version was redubbed Dangerous Female in order to distinguish it from Huston’s.

by Jim Knipfel

[64bit-trash]

IZ Treasure Planet AU

This is an au my friend @yeehawimscared and I have been putting together for a while now exclusively for @shadowofthelamp‘s Adventures in Parenthood multiverse (If you haven’t read her story on Ao3, I highly recommend checking it out.  It’s great!).  It’s been exclusive to the discord server, but for the sake of the tumblr fanbase and... well... creating an actual timeline so people know wtf is going on, I’m gonna make as short a summary here as I can (God help me, it’s a long story).

Warnings for mpreg and major character death!  And Zadr... because ships apparently need to have warnings attached now

In a universe where space travel is commonplace, so much so that even Earth is aware of the existence of aliens, Dib abandons his home planet as soon as he turns 18.  Paranormal hunting on Earth seems far less interesting to him than seeing the stars, and given he and his father don’t see eye-to-eye, it all seems to be in his favor.  He buys a spaceship and travels the stars for about a year before an accidental collision with a panicked Zim’s ship as he was attempting to escape his banishment.  The two crash land on a nearby moon, and immediately, it’s hate at first sight.

After two weeks of bickering and having no luck in repairing their own ships, Zim and Dib form a truce and agree to work together so they can get off this rock and never look at each other again.  However, the following weeks reveal that they actually work pretty well as a team, and more so that they have a lot in common.  When it’s finally time to say goodbye, they both realize they don’t really want to, and instead wind up travelling together.  As the months pass, they become inseparable and eventually lovers.

All seems well and good... until Zim finds out he’s pregnant and foolishly decides to inform the Tallest of this anomaly.  Instantly, they’re pursued and Zim is taken to Judgementia for deactivation.  Dib follows and manages to get Zim out alive, but at the cost of his own life.  Zim, unable to turn back and save him, winds up travelling alone.  Deciding he’s not going to risk their smeet as well, he escapes to a distant planet to hide while he raises Twix.

Twix grows up on a worthless junker planet where Zim is running a restaurant to make ends meet.  As she gets older, she begs Zim to let her leave the planet, but he rejects every plea, leading her to become rather moody and unmotivated as a teenager.  However, when a map to a legendary planet all but falls into her lap, she finally gets Zim to cave, and the two set off to find a crew and search for Treasure Planet.

While searching for a way to travel, they stumble across Gaz, who’s become a ship captain and is very interested in the discovery of Treasure Planet.  They join her crew, keeping their relation to each other a secret for their own safety.  Tensions immediately rise when Zim realizes he’s not the only Irken aboard.  Sizz-Lorr was hired on as well, playing nice in front of Twix, but warning Zim to stay out of his way if he doesn’t want to be reported to the Empire.  Sizz-Lorr manipulates Twix throughout the journey, getting her to trust him, and fueling the resentment she has toward Zim for being so controlling.

Zim’s warnings about him prove to be correct though when Sizz-Lorr launches a mutiny and Zim, Twix and Gaz escape by a hair, Twix just managing to snag the map, and Gaz getting a pretty nasty hit on their way out. While Zim is patching Gaz up, he discovers that Gaz is Dib’s sister, and the three realize they’re family.  Twix decides to look around for a way off the planet and stumbles across Gir, who follows her back and clings to Zim immediately upon seeing him.

Eventually the group manages to steal the ship back and finally find Treasure Planet with Sizz-Lorr tailing them to it.  As it turns out, Gir belonged to the pirate who made treasure planet and housed knowledge of a booby-trap that would destroy the planet, but he told them too late.  Sizz-Lorr and Twix have a showdown while Zim desperately tries to bring the pirate’s ship back to life, and in the end, Zim and Twix manage to kill Sizz-Lorr and barely make it out with Gaz and a small handful of treasure before the planet explodes.

You good?  You still with me?  GREAT, BECAUSE THERE’S STILL MORE!

After that adventure, Twix gets to attend the flight academy to learn to fly her own ship.  There, she meets her roommate, Tulip, who she instantly forms a rivalry with.  However the two team up to try to bring back a special ship that was stolen from the academy.  The two don’t stand a chance on their own, however, and Gaz and Zim wind up coming to their rescue, only to discover a much more robotic-looking Sizz-Lorr and his crew had stolen the ship.

The group forms a plan to take the ship back, and just when it seems they’ve gotten an advantage, a tall, mysterious new enemy shows up and interferes with the mission.  Zim winds up facing them one-on-one only for the fight to feel far too familiar. He manages to de-mask the intruder to discover Dib under the mask.  They manage to knock him out, but the discovery leaves the whole group shaken.  Zim sedates him and puts him in the Voot to keep safe.

Returning to their prior mission, they find little choice but to destroy the ship.  Better to destroy it than to let the empire get their hands on the new tech.  They kill Sizz-Lorr, making sure he’s dead this time, and blow up the ship.  Gaz takes Tulip and Twix back to the academy and Zim takes Dib.  He discovers that, instead of killing him, the Empire brainwashed Dib and turned him into a living weapon.  He spends months trying to undo the damage.  Having his coat return to him triggers his memories to start returning, and when he snaps back to his old self, he doesn’t remember anything from the past 17 years.

They put the pieces back together and Dib and Twix manage to build a friendly relationship, but they can’t really connect as father and daughter.  Twix is off living her own life and building her relationship with Tulip.  Eventually, She and Tulip get married, and Zim and Dib decide to have another kid, giving Dib the opportunity to be directly involved like he had wanted to be.

TL;DR Zim and Dib have a kid together, but Dib’s killed by the empire Zim raises Twix by himself Twix finds a map to treasure planet The plot follows the major events from the movie, but with Gaz as the captain, and Sizz-Lorr as an evil John Silver.  Gir as Ben Surprise!  Sizz-Lorr’s not dead!  Surprise!  Dib’s not dead! Dib don’t remember anything tho -_- Zim and Twix help him remember! Yay!  Happy ending!

#AIP #AIP Treasure Planet au #Gah it's so long! #I'm sorry! #I tried to make it short and sweet but too much happens! #Bambi and I are proud tho

[konruklakhon]

All the Big TV Shows Debuting the Rest of 2020

The sheer number of scripted TV programs being delivered every year—an incredible 532 arrangement broadcasted over all organizations, link, and web-based features in 2019—is faltering, in any event, during a worldwide pandemic when creations have been compelled to stop, and that doesn't factor in the zillions of unscripted TV dramas interminably siphoning out scenes. While the level of value shows has fallen over the previous decade thus, there will never be been more to cherish or a more extensive assortment of programming to watch. In a year where huge film discharges are rare, in any event we have TV.

What eminent new and returning shows are on tap for fall of 2020? Just bookmark this curated rundown of the most encouraging new TV arrangement and returning top choices going to a little screen close to you, and you'll generally be aware of everything.

Additionally read: Netflix firsts we're eager to see this year.. Learn more here หนังซีรีย์มาใหม่

B Positive

CBS, November 5

Hurl Lorre's (The Big Bang Theory ) most recent sitcom co-made with Marco Pennette (Ugly Betty ) is the exemplary romantic comedy meet charming: fellow needs a kidney, lady organ giver gives him that kidney. Thomas Middleditch makes light of that on-his-karma fellow and inverse him is Annaleigh Ashford, a lady he once knew and reconnects with further down the road, picking to help with his activity. — Sadie Bell

Spare Me

Peacock, November 5

This British wrongdoing show initially broadcasted on Starz and now is gone to Peacock for Season 2. The arrangement follows a dad (Lennie James) constantly on the chase for his little girl after she disappears, and Season 1 will likewise open up on the NBC stage. — SB

Two Weeks to Live

HBO Max, November 5

Maisie Williams might be finished playing Arya Stark, however she's actually going all out retribution searcher in her most recent venture. She stars as a Judgment day prepper who thinks the last days are close, and when she's tricked to accept there truly are only two additional weeks to live, she embarks to discover and kill the one who killed her dad years back. — SB Learn more here หนังซีรีย์มาใหม่

Moonbase 8

Showtime, November 8

Tim Heidecker, John C. Reilly, and Fred Armisen star as three imbeciles getting ready to dispatch themselves into space to move away from the wrecks they've made for themselves down on Earth. — Leanne Butkovic

The South Westerlies

Oak seed TV, November 9

Come for the pretty Irish landscape, remain for the show. At the point when a lady shows up to a little Irish town with the aim of selling her Norwegian organization's arrangements to manufacture a breeze ranch to local people, she is shocked to locate an individual association with the town, just as rivalry from another designer. — SB

Diversion

All the Big TV Shows Debuting the Rest of 2020

Add these to your to-gorge list

The sheer number of scripted TV programs being delivered every year—an incredible 532 arrangement circulated over all organizations, link, and real time features in 2019—is faltering, in any event, during a worldwide pandemic when creations have been compelled to end, and that doesn't factor in the zillions of unscripted TV dramas unendingly siphoning out scenes. While the level of value shows has fallen over the previous decade subsequently, there will never be been more to adore or a more extensive assortment of programming to watch. In a year where enormous film discharges are rare, in any event we have TV.

What outstanding new and returning shows are on tap for fall of 2020? Just bookmark this curated rundown of the most encouraging new TV arrangement and returning top choices going to a little screen close to you, and you'll generally be up to date. Learn more here หนังซีรีย์มาใหม่

Likewise read: Netflix firsts we're eager to see this year

Maisie Williams might be finished playing Arya Stark, yet she's actually going all out retribution searcher in her most recent undertaking. She stars as a Judgment day prepper who thinks the final days are close, and when she's tricked to accept there truly are only two additional weeks to live, she embarks to discover and kill the one who killed her dad years back. — SB

By Whatever Means Necessary: The Times of The Godfather of Harlem

Epix, November 8

Is it true that you are a fanatic of Epix's mobster period piece The Godfather of Harlem that stars Forest Whitaker? Indeed, you're in karma in light of the fact that Whitaker chief delivered this four-section docuseries to grow The Godfather of Harlem universe, giving setting on the show and what 1960s Harlem resembled. — SB

moonbase 8

im Heidecker, John C. Reilly, and Fred Armisen star as three imbeciles getting ready to dispatch themselves into space to move away from the wrecks they've made for themselves down on Earth. — Leanne Butkovic

industry hbo

AMANDA SEARLE/HBO

Industry

HBO, November 9

A venture banking dramatization where a bunch of late school graduates go after positions at a top organization, introducing an unvarnished glance at the sorts of things individuals will do to keep it together and let loose a little in this high-stakes, relentless world. Lena Dunham coordinates the pilot. — LB

The South Westerlies

Oak seed TV, November 9

Come for the pretty Irish view, remain for the dramatization. At the point when a lady shows up to a little Irish town with the expectation of selling her Norwegian organization's arrangements to assemble a breeze ranch to local people, she is astounded to locate an individual association with the town, just as rivalry from another designer. — SB

run and lily

Run and Lily

In view of Rachel Cohn and David Levithan's famous YA tale Dash and Lily's Book of Dares , this arrangement follows two youngsters in NYC who are aliens to one another however choose to pass a scratch pad they compose mysteries in to and fro and approach the other to finish a progression of dares in the city around Christmastime. Thus, it's fundamentally the ideal show for anyone who's idealistic about New York at Christmas. — SB

A Teacher

FX on Hulu, November 10

This sensational miniseries seems like a doozy: Kate Mara plays a secondary teacher who capitulates to an unlawful and ver illicit undertaking with one of her understudies played by Nick Robinson. —  Learn more here หนังซีรีย์มาใหม่

The Liberator

Netflix, November 11

This enlivened miniseries performs one of the most ruthless tasks of World War II known as Operation Avalanche, a journey that began in Italy and crossed Europe, driven generally by a gathering of Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and helpless farmers called the Thunderbirds. — SB

Preliminary 4

Netflix, November 11

A docuseries about the account of Sean Ellis, a man who was sentenced for executing a cop in Boston in the mid '90s and is resolved to demonstrate his honesty and uncover hard certainties about police debasement. — SB

alex rider

Alex Rider: youngster spy. Any possibility that opened a modest bunch of recollections you failed to remember you had? Since that is the subject of a progression of YA reconnaissance books that were very mainstream during the '00s, and it's currently getting the TV treatment over on IMDb's free-with-advertisements streaming stage. — SB

(Watch the trailer)

James May: Oh Cook

On the off chance that you can't bubble pasta without wrecking, this may be the one cooking show for you. It's fronted by comedian James May and a comedic cooking show for individuals who aren't any acceptable in the kitchen. — SB

the crown season 4

DES WILLIE/NETFLIX

The Crown

Olivia Colman is staying for one more period of Peter Morgan's authentic dramatization, yet as history keeps on advancing in the show and it moves into the '80s, a couple of new, energizing appearances are joining Season 4 . Clear a path for Maggie Thatcher and Princess Diana, played by Gillian Anderson and newcomer Emma Corrin, separately. — SB

his dim materials season 2

HBO

His Dark Materials

HBO's transformation of Philip Pullman's dream arrangement is onto Season 2 and getting the second book the set of three, The Subtle Knife , to the screen. Andrew Scott of Fleabag joins the cast. — SB

Huge Sky

ABC, November 17

Huge Little Lies showrunner David E. Kelley has another salicious show at his disposal with this variation of C.J. Box's wrongdoing books. The arrangement follows a couple of private specialists and an ex-cop attempting to get a transporter who abducted two little youngsters, who turn out not to be the first of his casualties. Learn more here หนังซีรีย์มาใหม่

We Are the Champions

November 17, Netflix

Ever wonder exactly who precisely a portion of the eating rivalry or yo-yo champs of the world are? This arrangement that turns out to be chief created by Rainn Wilson of The Office popularity dives into who those exceptional contenders are and the novel networks that exist in whimsical rivalries. — SB

A dead zone

Hulu, November 18

A war epic about a French trooper who is looking for his missing sister in the Syrian common war and unites with a gathering of Kurdish female contenders to discover her. — Learn more here หนังซีรีย์มาใหม่

[thenightling]

Films and shows to get you ready for Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman

Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman is getting adapted into a series by Netflix.   Though this is a DC comics property, The Sandman is NOT like Batman, Superman, or Wonder Woman.  The Sandman is a gorgeous and surreal fantasy that only partially takes place in the human world.  A big part of it takes place in the fantasy realm known as The Dreaming. 

There is very little combat action though there is horror.   To give you an idea of what you are in for (Or if you are a Sandman fan already and want something to hold you off) here are twenty-five films and shows that share some of the traits (or atmosphere) you might find in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.

25.   The Raven (1963 film).  This might seem like an oddball one to list since it’s a Gothic Horror fantasy comedy from the 1960s but it gets referenced in The Sandman by Matthew imitating Peter Lorre and later Matthew compared Cain to Vincent Price.  I think it’s safe to say Matthew was a Price (or Roger Coman) fan.  

24.   Death.   Death is a short animated film from DC and was featured as bonus content for the Blu Ray of the animated movie Wonder Woman: Bloodlines. 

Though she looks younger (appearing about nineteen-years-old) Death is the older sister of Morpheus AKA Dream of The Endless, the main protagonist of The Sandman.  She was first introduced in The Sandman issue 8, The Sound of Her Wings.

23.   Stardust.

Stardust is a fantasy film based on the novel (and graphic novel) by Neil Gaiman.  Though there are liberties taken, this should give you some idea of what his fantasy writing is like.

 22.    Beetlejuice the animated series. 

If you want an idea of what The Dreaming (realm of Dreams) is like then I urge you to check out the surreal Neither (that’s not a typo) World from the Beetlejuice animated series.  The monsters that inhabit this realm are the stuff of fantasy and nightmares.  Some are living puns.  And they are ruled over by a broody Goth who makes it rain when he’s depressed and feeling melodramatic, much like a certain Dream Lord from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman...

21.  Bonus listing:   The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.  

One major antagonist of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman is a nightmare entity known as The Corinthian who escapes into the waking world and becomes a serial killer.  Had Sandman been adapted in the mid-90s I think many would have loved a crossover with Freddy Krueger.  

20.   Return to Oz.

If by some weird chance you have never seen The Wizard of Oz or any faithful (read: Not 2010) version of Alice in Wonderland I would recommend those first.  But under the assumption you may have already seen those I would suggest watching Return to Oz.   Return to Oz features an adorable Jack-o-lantern headed character called Jack Pumpkinhead.   Jack Pumpkinhead was the loose inspiration for the grounds keeper dream entity character of Mervyn Pumpkinhead in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.  

19. Tales from the Crypt (TV series).

Issue 2 of The Sandman is called Imperfect Hosts because all of the characters introduced in that issue are former horror host characters from horror anthology comics.  Cain and Abel were DC’s answer to The Crypt keeper and The Vault Keeper.  For a good idea of who Cain actually is (assuming he’s in the show along with his House of Mystery) I strongly recommend checking out the TV show Tales from the Crypt.  

18.   Tales from the Cryptkeeper (animated series)

In the mid-1990s there was an animated series adaptation of Tales from the Crypt called Tales from the Cryptkeeper.  Season 2 featured the three original EC comics horror hosts of the Cryptkeeper, Vault Keeper, and the Old Witch.  These storytellers might give you an idea of who (or what) some of Morpheus’ Nightmare minion are in The Sandman.

 17.    Hocus Pcous.  

I chose to put this one here because the three witches of Hocus Pocus very much remind me of the Hecatae version of The Three-in-one from The Sandman Issue 2.   There’s also a powerful Grimoire that is a plot catalyst. 

16.   The 10th Kingdom.

The 10th Kingdom was a fantasy mini-series that aired on NBC in 2000.   It dealt with a twenty-seven-year-old young woman who discovers that her estranged mother is the evil queen in a faery tale world.   It is very much a story about stories (much like parts of The Sandman) and shows you the original dark and unvarnished versions of some classic faery tales as well as how those characters (and their descendants) carry on centuries later.

15.   Once Upon a Time (TV series.  Particularly seasons 1 through 3.)  

Much like with 10th Kingdom we have here a story about stories and those characters from classic stories trying to live in the human world with varying degrees of success.  You see how important their stories are and how carefully and intricately each tale was interwoven with each other.  (...Until around season 4 that is...)

Also it begins with a very powerful creature imprisoned and later undergoing an extremely long redemption arc and a sense of guilt tied to the death of his own son.

14.  Constantine:  City of Demons.

John Constantine appears in one issue of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.   Issue 3.   Constantine: City of Demons gives a good crash course on who Constantine is and where he comes from.  John Constantine’s ancestor, Johanna Constantine is a recurring character in The Sandman.

13.  Justice League: Dark animated movie.   

Justice League:  Dark is the first animated movie to feature The House of Mystery.  The House of Mystery is a building whose roots are in The Dreaming in The Sandman.

12.   Constantine (2014 series).  

 In 2014 Constantine got his own live action series but it only lasted for one season. 

11.  Locke and Key.

Only recently did I learn Locke and Key will be doing an official crossover with The Sandman Universe.

 10.    Lucifer TV series.  

The TV show Lucifer is an oddball thing since it was based on a comic that is actually a spin-off of The Sandman.  The storyline that introduces us to Mazikeen, where Lucifer quits ruling Hell, opens Lux, and takes up playing Piano all come from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.

When Fox got the rights to Lucifer no one thought The Sandman was going to be getting an adaptation, at least not in the near future.  As a result several conversations and key pieces of dialogue that originally passed between Morpheus and Lucifer in The Sandman comics now went to Lucifer and his therapist, Linda, and his angel-brother, Amenadiel. 

Bonus: If at all possible check out the Crisis on infinite Earths event from the CW as the real Crisis on Infinite Earths (original comic event) eventually gave way to things like The Sandman.

9.   The Witches (1990) and Coraline (2009)   I couldn’t decide which one to put here so I put them both.

  The Witches is a children’s horror film based on the book by Roald Dahl. I suggest this here for its darker themes and you get a group of dangerous, child-killing witches attending a meeting at a hotel, much like The Corinthian’s Serial Killer convention in The Sandman.

Coraline is a stop motion fantasy / horror story for children and can give you some idea of what certain aspects of The Sandman are like, as it is by the same author.

8.    Pan’s Labyrinth.  

The Sandman is very much part fantasy and part Gothic horror and no director alive quite fits that criteria now better than Guillermo del Toro and possibly Tim Burton.   Pan’s Labyrinth has the surreal beauty and darkness you are likely to see in The Sandman.

7.   Doom Patrol.

Doom Patrol was the first DC show that made me have faith that yes, they CAN adapt Sandman respectfully and unafraid of the strangeness it might entail.  Doom Patrol seemed unafraid to tackle the strange, quirkiness of it’s own content.  From a talking roach, to gender-queer sentient street named Danny, Doom Patrol was not afraid to be strange.  

6.   Swam Thing (2019 TV series from DC Universe Streaming Service).

I mostly suggest this for one character in particular. Matthew Cable.  After Matthew died in The Sandman comics he chose to spend his afterlife as Morpheus’ raven.

Besides featuring a character from The Sandman Swamp Thing gives a very good Gothic atmosphere and supernatural content, giving you an idea of the sort of horror DC can do.  

6.  Justice League Action:   Trick or Threat.   And Justice League action: Supernatural adventures in Babysitting.

The episode of Justice League Action called Trick or Threat features Cain, a nightmare character from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, as well as The House of Mystery.   This was Cain’s first appearance in media.  The version of Cain in the TV show Lucifer is nothing like his comic book counterpart.  This cartoon is the first and only faithful adaptation of the character from the comics.

The episode of Justice League Action called Supernatural Adventures in Babysitting features the Magdalene Grimoire. This is the grimoire used to summon Morpheus in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.  It also features John Constantine.

    5.   She-Creature:  The Mermaid Chronicles (2001 film)

This is an odd from about some humans have a captured mermaid.  The majority of the film is about her escape and revenge on her captors.  You will see something similar to that with Morpheus in the very first episode of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.    

4.  The Company of Wolves. 

The Company of Wolves is a story about stories.  In the ontemporary world a pubescent girl sleeps during her first period. She dreams that she is Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother tells her horrific stories about werewolves.  The wolves become metaphors For puberty, masculinity, and waking sexuality.  Toward the end Rosealeen (the protagonist) becomes one of the wolves.   You get random stark reminders that this entire film is set in a dream world, and yet it’s still strangely easy to forget.

 3.   The Nightmare before Christmas.

The Nightmare before Christmas is a fantasy musical about the king of Halloween.  Though he’s adored by his subjects he longs for more.  The surreal landscape and strange creatures can be reminiscent of The Sandman.

2.   Labyrinth.

One of the earliest efforts to talk me into reading The Sandman entailed someone telling me that Morpheus was “Like a Goth Jareth.”   This effort (at the time) failed to entice me though I do love Labyrinth.   

1.   Over The Garden Wall. 

I only saw Over the Garden Wall for the first time about a year and a half ago and loved it very much.   This is a strange animated mini-series about two brothers lost in a forest called “The Unknown.”   The setting has been debated among fans as to if it’s purgatory (a place between life and death), a dream realm, or something else entirely.  I choose to believe that though it may be a place between life and Death that it’s also a part of The Dreaming, especially with so many surreal and Gothic visuals, and characters and creatures directly out of vintage seasonal cards.

#The Sandman #Neil Gaiman's The Sandman

[shredmytapestry]

ABOUT – TEDDY LUPIN

[ EDWARD REMUS “TEDDY” LUPIN ] has arrived in Ardere! Under the bonfire light, this [ TWENTY-EIGHT ] year old [ CISMALE ] is sometimes mistaken for [ SAM CLAFLIN ]. Since graduating from [ HOGWARTS ], they have been working as an [ AUROR ]. The battle is brewing and they must pick sides but who will they choose? In the upcoming election, they will be voting for [ HERMIONE GRANGER-WEASLEY ].

BASIC INFORMATION.

FULL NAME: edward remus lupin NICKNAME(S) OR ALIAS: teddy, tedweirdo, ted GENDER: male SPECIES: halfblood wizard (and metamorphmagus)  AGE: 28 BIRTHDAY: april 13th, 1998 ZODIAC SIGN: aries HOUSE: hufflepuff PATRONUS: non corporeal ARMY AFFILIATION: hermione granger-weasley SEXUALITY: pansexual NATIONALITY: british CITY OR TOWN OF BIRTH: colchester, england CURRENTLY LIVES: london, england LANGUAGES SPOKEN: english & fluent in dumbass bc his best friend is james potter NATIVE LANGUAGE: english RELATIONSHIP STATUS: hot, sexy, lonely singles in your area :/

HEALTH.

SMOKER?: rarely DRINKER?: yes RECREATIONAL DRUG USER? WHICH?: no SOCIABILITY: introvert

HOUSE & HOME.

DESCRIBE THE CHARACTER’S HOUSE/HOME

teddy lives in a fancy flat in london, england with his best friend, james potter. james and teddy moved into this flat not long after james’ graduation as the two have been inseparable since james was born. teddy is the one who keeps their flat clean since he rarely leaves unless it’s for work. he’s also the one who cooks most of their meal since james acts like a 3 year old and never eats healthy. they live in a two bedroom flat, but one bedroom is mostly for show. 

FAMILY, FRIENDS, & FOES.

PARENTS NAMES: nymphadora tonks and remus lupin. both deceased, and not a day goes by where teddy doesn’t miss his parents. he’d be willing to give up nearly anything for a chance to talk to them.  SIBLINGS? RELATIONSHIP WITH SIBLINGS?: no siblings, but the wotter’s are as close as and he adores them all. espeically james.  OTHER IMPORTANT RELATIVES: lorre (mother) was a quidditch champion, idk where else to put it deal with it PARTNER/SPOUSE: n/a EXES: tba. CHILDREN: - BEST FRIEND: james sirius potter duhhhh OTHER IMPORTANT FRIENDS: tba. open connection PETS: shared custody of newtie who is 17 and no where close to dying, and tonkie who is 10. 

BLURBS

hey folks it’s mar im lazy so u get badly written blurbs and NO MORE

right so teddy has depression. it stemmed from hearing about the war, and everyone’s success stories. since he grew up so tight knit with the wotters and most of them lived... teddy was jealous. he was hateful at the mention of the war. all he had from his parents were stories. 

that being said, he loves every wotter he grew up with. he lived with his grandmum, andromeda, but always was the closest of friends with james. perhaps it was because he adored ginny since he was little and james was the closest thing to ginny that was still a child. he was always mature and from the start he’s been involved in the potter’s lives. 

teddy and james made a pact to always be best friends and live together one day, even if teddy was 11 and james was 5, he meant every word. and now they do live together!! yay happy times. 

teddy became an auror like harry because he was lost after hogwarts and andromeda had passed. he couldn’t be a burden on the potter’s, so he started helping out and eventually he was a full blown auror. he loves that job, loves that it gets him riled up because feeling emotions is hard. 

that’s another thing, his emotions are always so in check that he feels like he’s faking them. his smiles aren’t always genuine, homeboy has some very deep rooted issues that he can’t unfold. and sadly no one has noticed because everyone has their own lives to worry about. 

he’s 28 and no where near settling down. he can’t hold a proper adult relationship, but he fucking tries. not really a hoe but will go through phases where he tries to date people seriously and then of course it crumbles because he can’t open up.

seriously he has 2 emotions, happy and ok. he never cries, he just can’t???? like his mind n heart do not connect. if he ever cries, it’s in complete secrecy 

is completely inept at technology, he’s not like wizard stupid? he’s just old school and doesn’t feel right about instagram and especially not nudes. he’s a bit of a prude 

um that’s all i’ve got at this time. he’s a metamorphmagi ! has different coloured hair n eyes all the time, his favourite is rainbow hair but like some pastel rainbow. no one will see it bc he doesn’t leave the house

ok homies pls give me plots before i break down ur doors for plots 

#ch. teddy #ardereintro

[giftfromthesleepprincess]

Chapter 2—Is the Blue Haired Marquis Santa Claus?; Scene 2

Gift From the Princess Who Brought Sleep, pages 47-56

After she left the inn, Hanne headed on foot for the mansion of Marquis Blankenheim in the center of Toragay.

Even more than being a reporter of the Schuburg Newspaper, the name of the Freezis Foundation that stood behind it had its own power, and thanks to that she would be able to do her investigative snooping with relative ease, even if she was dealing with someone who held moderate influence.

…But then, that was if she had properly secured an appointment beforehand. Unexpected visits like this weren’t necessarily well received each time.

She steeled herself to be turned away at the door, and then pulled on the doorbell dangling at the main entrance.

She waited for a while, but there wasn’t any indication of anyone coming outside.

Maybe he’s not home?

Seeing as she was intruding without an appointment, there was little she could do for it. Just as she turned heel to set out again, she heard the sound of the door opening behind her. When she once more turned around, there was an elderly man in a suit standing there.

He didn’t look like a servant. For a moment she thought he might be Marquis Blankenheim, but his hair color was green. He was a purebred Elphe.

“Do you have some business here?” the man asked, to which Hanne conversely returned the question:

“Are you a gentleman of this mansion?”

“Uh…Well, yes. Something like that.”

It was a somewhat evasive response, but she decided to ignore it.

“I would like to have an audience with Marquis Kaspar Blankenheim.”

“Are you an associate of the marquis?”

“Yeah, well, something like that.”

It was a vague reply, as though to tell him they were in the same position.

Hanne didn’t know if the man believed her words or not, but what he next uttered was entirely unexpected to her.

“The Marquis has passed on.”

“Eh...”

For a short time she couldn’t find the words to reply.

That old woman hadn’t said one word about the marquis dying. It also didn’t seem likely that she had been fibbing.

“Wh—when was this? When did the marquis die!? What in the world was the cause—”

“Please calm down. For now, I would like you to tell me properly just who you are. We’ll talk after that.”

“I am Hanne Lorre, of the Schuburg Newspaper.”

These were extraordinary circumstances. She decided to dispense with the roundabout tactics and just cut to the chase.

The moment the other man learned that she was a reporter, he instantly gave her a sour look.

“A news reporter, you say!? N-no, go home! There’s nothing to talk about!”

But she couldn’t afford to quietly back down at his command.

“Isn’t there? You just said so. The marquis governing Toragay has passed on...That’s certainly a big matter. I have to write an article about how you’re going to deal with it. But if you won’t give me the details, then I have no choice—yeah, I would be very unwilling but I have no choice, yes?—It will be incumbent upon me to fill the contents of the article with guesses and prejudices and subjective opinions. What should the headline be? Hmmm, like, ‘Marquis Blankenheim, Murdered!’, or—”

“W—wait just a second! The marquis wasn’t killed or anything! It was fatal illness—Yes, most certainly, it was death by illness!”

“Oh is that right? Yes, that’s why I’m asking if you would kindly give me the particulars on this case,” Hanne replied, with a firm tone that went against the pleasant smile on her face.

Seeming to have given up on driving Hanne away, the man turned to the side and let out a huge sigh.

And then invited Hanne to enter the mansion.

.

The man’s name was Marx Felix. He said that he was a doctor, and a former associate of the marquis.

“My daughter was married to the marquis, you see.”

“In other words, you were the marquis’ father-in-law.”

“That’s correct. I had that connection to him, and I also served as his primary physician. Lately it seems the marquis had started to think his health declining, feeling frequently tired. I was worried, so now and then I’d come over to see how he was doing. I’d done that this morning too. ...He was in bed. At first I thought he might be sleeping, but that wasn’t the case. The marquis did not wake when called, and when I drew closer to check on him, he wasn’t breathing and his body had gone completely cold. It appears that the marquis, and the woman next to him, probably died sometime last night—”

“The woman next to him? You must mean your daughter—So the wife also passed away huh?...You have my condolences for tha—”

But Marx awkwardly shook his head.

“No, that’s not it. The one in the bed with him wasn’t my daughter. It was...a different woman.”

“Uhh...So in other words, you mean...”

“It is exactly like that; I ask for your sympathy on this. And...If possible I’d be very grateful if you kept the matter of the woman out of your article.”

She supposed this meant that Marquis Blankenheim had been a womanizer.

Ah well. She’d rather leave writing a trashy article like that to someone like her colleague, Moritz.

Hanne nodded once to show her intentions.

“Is your daughter alright?”

“Yes. She’s in an interior room now.”

“I’d like to speak with her as well if I may—”

“You must bear with me on that. She has received a great shock. For now I would like to leave her in peace.”

“I see, I suppose that’s understandable. Well then, as for the cause of the Marquis death—”

“He died of illness.”

“But that alone…If you can, I want you to tell me the full name of this illness too.”

The two of them had been sitting facing each other in one of the mansion’s rooms, but Marx slowly stood, took something from a cupboard against the wall, and showed it to Hanne.

“It was this. This, I think, was the cause.”

It was some kind of plant leaves rolled into a cylinder.

“Is this...tobacco?”

“So you know of it. Naturally as a reporter of the Schuburg paper you’d be attuned to the latest fashion. This is something brought in from the New World. It’s become greatly popular among the aristocracy in Elphegort lately.”

“Yes, that’s what I’ve heard.”

“But frankly, this is something I just can’t recommend, as a doctor. I personally think it can cause harm to your internal organs, particularly your throat and lungs. I can’t prove it yet, so no matter how many times I told him that the marquis would not listen to me. …Though, while unexpected his death serves as proof, I suppose.”

“So, you’re saying tobacco was the cause of the marquis’ death?”

“The throats of both the marquis and the woman he was with were swollen and blackened. I have no doubts this was the cause of death.”

“Wait just a minute, please. You discovered that the marquis had passed away this morning, right? You haven’t had a chance to look into this properly; isn’t it a bit hasty to make such a judgment so soon?”

“It might not look so, but I am the best doctor in Toragay! And I say that the cause of death was respiratory failure from tobacco. So that’s final!”

In Hanne’s experience there was no way to test if a doctor who called himself the ‘best’ was really all that skilled; however, figuring it would be a bad idea to sour his mood any further she quieted down and replied only, “Have you already contacted the World Police?”

“Of course. You got here while I was waiting for them. ...Well, you’re satisfied now, yes? You can hear what the police have to say after they’ve finished their investigation. They’re subordinates of the Freezis Foundation like yourself, so that makes you colleagues, yes?”

“—Well then, lastly...I would appreciate it if you let me see the Marquis’ condition for myself.”

“Huh!? …Ah, well, I don’t mind, but…Though his body is neatly arranged, as though sleeping, it’s still a corpse, yes? You’ll try not to faint from shock, won’t you?”

“No worries. I’m quite used to seeing corpses.”

Marx stared at Hanne with an unwittingly startled expression at how casually she had replied.

“—Oh no, I just mean, I see that kind of thing a lot, in my line of work,” she added, trying to smooth things over.

.

The remains of Marquis Blankenheim and the woman thought to be his lover were still laying in bed as they had been when the bodies were discovered.

Just as the doctor had said, the two of them looked as though they were sleeping, expressions so peaceful that it was hard to tell from a quick look that they were dead. Still, they weren’t breathing.

The woman’s hair was blonde, although when Hanne felt it she could immediately tell it had been dyed.

“’Scuse me.”

She put a hand on the woman’s closed eyelids and opened them to check her iris. They were green. Seems she’d been an Elphe.

Had her dying her hair blonde been to her own tastes, or what the marquis wanted? She’d never know that, now.

That marquis. The moment that Hanne saw his face she was overcome with dizzyness.

It wasn’t that she was shy of corpses. As she’d told Marx, she had become well accustomed to death a long time ago.

The marquis’ hair color was blue as she’d expected, but that wasn’t the cause either.

Perhaps this case—Marx had said it was death by illness but that was wrong. She knew this was unmistakably a case.

This case wouldn’t end here.

Maybe…surely, this was only the beginning.

She had no basis for her belief--but she was confident that she wasn’t mistaken.

Hanne had never met Marquis Blankenheim.

She didn’t know if those were appropriate words to say about a corpse, but this was their first time face to face.

He was much younger than she’d thought, and what was more fairly handsome.

But that wasn’t what was important.

Hanne knew.

She had seen this man’s face before.

.

Among the World Police officers who arrived shortly thereafter she found someone she knew.

“How’ve you been, Constable Ayn Anchor?”

When she spoke up to him, he shot back his usual displeased expression.

“What are you doing here, Hanne Lorre?”

“Happenstance. I dropped by to see Marquis Blankenheim for my article coverage and this was the state of things.”

“I just bet.”

“You’ve gotta believe me. It’s nothing but the truth this time around.”

“…Well, whatever. Just don’t get in the way of the investigation,” the white haired young man said, pulling his cap over his eyes.

“I had something I was hoping you could look into for me while you’re investigating, if you could.”

“What is it?”

“I need to know if there’s anyone else in this town outside of the marquis who has blue hair—"

“No way.”

“If you’re just going to reject it offhand then you shouldn’t have asked what it was…Fine, I’ll just have to investigate myself.”

It seemed this young officer simply didn’t like her that much. There were several reasons why that came to mind, but Hanne had no inclination to apologize for them.

She too was being a reporter as her job. Certainly, she would sometimes obstruct the actions of the police as a result of her media coverage, and she would cause them a great deal of trouble, but that was no reason for her to be so hated.

Hanne turned her back to Ayn for a moment, deciding to leave this place to the police for now, but then remembered she had one more thing to ask him and turned around again.

“Is Heidemarie doing well?”

Ayn continued to face the marquis lying in bed, not bothering to look at her, but he answered, “She’s in Aceid on another assignment right now. She’s…as she always is.”

“I see…thank you. Well then, keep up the good work, hm?”

This time Hanne left the room.

<<prev------directory------next>>

[delistylehardcore]

random brain farting about n. gin and his thoughts on morality n good n evil n working for the bad guys

ive long determined, going by the fact that gin went to EVIL SCHOOL and so probably his parents sent him there, that n. gin comes from a long lineage of igors. EVERYONE in his family is a sniveling, hunchbacked, one-squinty-eyed, peter lorre-voiced sycophant. because that’s fucking hilarious. to be a respected and accomplished member of the gin bloodline is base your career around groveling at the feet of a reviled evil genius. n. gin COMES from an evil-aligned family. it was made clear to him that he needed to help make the world a worse place in order to make his folks proud. but if you put the canon tidbits of “went to evil school” and “was always considered a disappointment by his parents” together, you get... "probably sucks at being evil.” hell, he probably flunked out of amberly’s eventually.

n. gin is not really a good person, and he was never hero material even as a Nice Little Boy, but he is thoughtful, mild, and gentle by nature. he’s not very empathetic, but he can’t help but take note of people around him and find himself analyzing them and their actions. he’s very observant and decidedly not self-centered. he doesn’t know what all of it means, but over time he’s learned to connect certain symptoms he observes to certain causes, just through experience. he’s very good at reading people, and inferring what’s probably going through their head. combine that with the fact that he also has an immense capacity to take pity on those who strike him as truly suffering, and you get something approximating compassion. he cares because he understands. he notices, observes, and understands too much around him to be able to ignore it.

he never wanted to be an igor to some big-shot bad guy. that never interested him. as a child he was interested in physics and astronomy. he wanted to work at NASA when he grew up and design the rocket that would bring the first humans to mars. that never ended up happening, but he did end up a rocket scientist. just... not one making the kind of rockets that go into space. rather, the kind that, uh, kill people.

it’s really tough for me to make any kind of call on how he actually feels about directing his research towards military purposes. he made a name for himself there, and it’s entirely possible that he was happy there. in my own anti-militarism bias i just want to believe that he would’ve rather been working in astrophysics lmao. i can believe that he loves things that go boom, and has a deep interest in firearms and artillery and thinks that stuff’s interesting, but yeah entirely out of personal bias i’m inclined to hc that he always wanted to do bigger, grander things but this is where he ended up, and he ended up being successful here, so he stayed.

then the accident happened and everything started rapidly going downhill. his employers let him go pretty soon after, deemed him disabled and unfit for the job, probably mostly just an excuse to not have to shell out obscene amounts of cash for his medical insurance as per company policy. those hospital bills were SKYROCKETING (no pun intended). and of course nobody will fucking hire him. his resume would make anyone jealous, he’s an accomplished physicist anyone would be proud to call their employee, but nobody wants to have a walking bomb in their offices and nobody wants to have to spend all day looking at THAT. he’s unemployed, he’s swamped in debt, his health is incredibly fragile, things are looking really bad. and he’s so fucking mad. it’s not fair. it’s just rejection everywhere he turns, well, because ableism essentially! fantastic cartoon ableism, but that’s basically what it boils down to! he’s a freak, nobody wants to give him a chance, nobody wants to even LOOK at him, he’s always been a prime target for dickheaddery - sensitive, total type B personality, kind of inherently pitiful despite his accomplishments - but this is a new level. it’s just mindblowing to him how cruel people are towards him now. he couldn’t fathom that kind of absolute absence of compassion until he’d had it pointed at him.

he’s at a complete dead end, he can’t find anywhere else to turn, and then cortex shows up with an offer he can’t refuse. he’s literally gonna fucking die if he doesn’t find a job that will cover his medical expenses. 

and to be honest, when cortex first tells him ‘okay, so here’s the deal, we’re going to take every single human being on earth, seven billion people, and take away their free will, destroy their minds, make them not people anymore, we’re going to turn all life on the planet into vegetables’, he’d kind of rather die than help something so horrific come to fruition, to destroy billions of innocent lives like that. he has enough blood on his hands from the job he just lost.

but he’s been so terribly wronged and he knows it. he’s heartbroken and he’s livid beyond words. he had never felt hatred like that before. but there’s a big part of him, impossible to ignore, that wants more than anything for everyone to just know what it feels like. he wishes he could just somehow bounce everything he’s feeling back onto everyone who inflicted that on him. he wants them to know and understand intimately what they did to him. and cortex uses that to just play him like a damn fiddle. promises him the opportunity to punish the entire society that wronged him, promises him the opportunity to pave the way for a whole new world where that will never happen again, where he’ll be treated like a human being. and the proposition is just fucking intoxicating to him. he doesn’t have the brain power to say no. he takes the bait like an idiot. combine that with the fact that he now literally owes his life to cortex for taking him in when no one else would and giving him the means to literally keep himself alive and you’ve got hook line and sinker. he’s in.

and he’s being strung along nice and smooth for a while, not questioning anything, doing everything he’s told like a good igor, it’s all gonna pay off soon he’s sure, but then a humble little human cloning project codenamed “nina” comes along and starts changing everything. 

#crash #gin

[fibula-rasa]

August 2018 in Review

I have a weird memory. It’s highly pattern-driven and very visual. This means that my memory of films I’ve watched is based on images and series of images that made an impression instead of plot points. It’s why I rewatch movies so often. Even though I’ve been tracking my movie viewing habits for two and a half years, that doesn’t mean I’ve created strong memories for all those movies. That’s why I’m gonna start doing monthly roundups of the new-to-me films that struck me, one way or the other.

[If you wanna know all the films I’m watching, I keep full lists on letterboxd and imdb.]

The reviews below are essentially transcriptions of the notes I took right after watching the films. Because of Summer Under the Stars and my cosplay challenge, this month was pretty TCM heavy for me.

Full Roundup BELOW THE JUMP!

Teen Titans Go to the Movies (2018)

27 July 2018 | 84 min. | Color

Directed and Written by Aaron Horvath and Peter Rida Michail

Starring Greg Cipes, Scott Menville, Khary Payton, Tara Strong, and Hynden Walch

I’m already a fan of the show and the movie kicks it up a notch with its humor and style. [If you liked the original series, give TTG a chance already.] TTG to the Movies is a great superhero movie for anyone who’s down for superhero stories but is fatigued by the current spate of offerings. Grain-of-Salt warning here because I think Superman III (1983) is great.  

Fun that they included some gags here and there for the parents out there who’ve had to hear the Waffles song a few too many times. Also, one of the best ending gags for a kid’s movie ever.

Where to Watch: Still in theaters, but I’d imagine Cartoon Network will be playing it soon.

Doctor X (1932)

27 August 1932 | 76 min. | 2-strip Technicolor

Directed by Michael Curtiz

Written by Earl Baldwin and Robert Tasker

Starring Lionel Atwill, Lee Tracy, and Fay Wray

I made the statement that Darkman (1990) is the most comic-book movie that isn’t adapted from a comic book. I hadn’t seen Doctor X yet though.

The set pieces are phenomenal. Each shot is artfully constructed and the way the shots are strung together makes the most of the production design. If one were to do a comic adaptation, it would take some imaginative work to not just mimic the film. The 2-strip technicolor is particularly effective in the laboratory scenes in creating an eerie aura. Sensational.

Lee Tracy is playing, as usual, a press man and he’s doing so perfectly. Tracy is so underrated.

Where to Watch: Looks like the DVD is out of print, so maybe check your local library or video store. TCM plays it every once and a while and, since Warner Bros has a deal with Filmstruck, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it pop up there eventually.

The Half-Naked Truth (1932)

16 December 1932 | 77 min. | B&W

Directed by Gregory La Cava

Written by Corey Ford and Gregory La Cava

Starring Frank Morgan, Eugene Pallette, Lee Tracy, and Lupe Velez

You might very well think Lee Tracy was a featured TCM star this month. (Maybe next SUTS? Pretty please.)

Lupe Velez is so talented and natural it was nice to see her in a film where her wits were matched. I’ll be honest, I’m a big Lupe fan but, for most of her films, she’s the only good reason to watch them. This wasn’t the case here! There are a lot of wonderful moments with small movements and gestures that make Velez and Tracy’s relationship feel very real, as if they’re actually that caught up in one another. Eugene Pallette, Franklin Pangborn, and Frank Morgan round out the ensemble. The running eunuch joke might not be all that funny, but it’s a masterclass in not saying what you mean. Also, very cute chihuahua.

Where to Watch: The DVD is available from the Warner Archive. (So, once again, local library or video store might have a copy.)

The Cuban Love Song (1931)

5 December 1931 | 86 min. | B&W

Directed by W.S. Van Dyke

Written by John Lynch, Bess Meredith, and C. Gardener Sullivan

Starring Jimmy Durante, Lawrence Tibbett, Ernest Torrance, and Lupe Velez

Lupe is wonderful in this. She plays a Cuban woman who sounds an awful lot like a Mexican woman--which might be something you have to overlook to enjoy the film FYI. Lawrence Tibbett has a shocking dearth of charisma in the lead, but Jimmy Durante, Ernest Torrence, and Louise Fazenda take the heat off him well. It’s a little hard to root for Tibbett’s character and the ending is disappointing. (Spoiler: privileging of the affluent “white” couple.)

The songs are great. I love the habit of placing people in musicals so that they are singing full force directly into each other’s faces. I don’t know why I find it so funny, but it’s not a mood ruiner for Cuban Love Song. The editing is fun and energetic. Until the war breaks out, there’s a lot of solid humor.

After watching so many Lupe films this month, I’d love to sit down with people who do and don’t know Spanish to talk about her films. There seem to be some divisions on social media and across blogs about Lupe’s films that might be attributable to whether or not one understands Spanish. I myself understand Spanish reasonably well and I think knowing what Lupe and others are saying makes almost all of her films funnier. And boy, does Lupe like calling men stupid animals.

Where to Watch: This one seems kinda rare. Looks like there may have been a VHS release, but you may just have to wait for TCM to play it again!

The Night Stalker (1972)

11 January 1972 | 74 min. | Color

Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey

Written by Jeffrey Grant Rice and Richard Matheson

Starring Carol Lynley, Darren McGavin, and Simon Oakland

and

The Night Strangler (1973)

16 January 1973 | 74 min. | Color

Directed by Dan Curtis

Written by Jeffrey Grant Rice and Richard Matheson

Starring Darren McGavin, Simon Oakland, and Jo Ann Pflug

I loved that these films are exactly like the Kolchak TV series. My SO and I have been watching the show weekly as it airs on MeTV and so he surprised me by renting the movies that kicked off the series. Honestly, watching backwards may have made the movies even more entertaining. How is Kolchak still working for Vincenzo in Las Vegas?? The answer is in Seattle.

The TV movies were intended as a trilogy, but after the success of the first two films, it was developed into a series instead. It’s cool to see how every piece of the Kolchak formula was in place immediately and how firmly Darren McGavin had a hold on the character. His chemistry with Simon Oakland (Vincenzo) is spectacular--a great comedy duo TBH. If you like their shouting matches on the show, Night Strangler has a humdinger to offer you.

Night Stalker is a pretty straight-forward vampire story, written by Richard Matheson, one of the great spec-fic writers of the 1960s and 1970s. Matheson also wrote one of the best undead novels of all time, I am Legend. What elevates the film over the basic mythology, aside from the great performances, pacing, and editing, is that the story’s really about how suppression actually goes down--how mundane and frustrating it can be even in the face of the supernatural.

Night Strangler is a little more creative with its monster. They integrate the nature and landmarks of Seattle in fun ways. The stripper characters are delightful. Jo Ann Pflug gives a truly funny performance and feels like a natural contender for Kolchak. Even his romantic relationships should be affectionately combative. The ditzy lesbian, Charisma Beauty (Nina Wayne) is hilarious and Wayne’s timing is impeccable. (BTW: they don’t explicitly call her a lesbian but it’s still made very overt.) There’s also a wonderful cameo by Margaret Hamilton.

As far as I can tell, it’s easier to get access to these films than the series. They’re worth seeing even if you haven’t seen the Kolchak TV show. They’re also a good pick if you’re a fan of X-Files, as Kolchak is the mother of that show. Even though I’m an X-Files fan and grew up watching it, Kolchak is edging it out for me lately. Maybe because if you’re telling a story about fighting for truth against the suppression of information, you undercut yourself by making the protagonist a fed.

Where to Watch: Kino Lorber is releasing restored editions of the films on Blu-ray and DVD in October!

The Mask of Dimitrios (1944)

1 July 1944 | 95 min. | B&W

Directed by Jean Negulesco

Written by Frank Gruber

Starring Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Zachary Scott

This was great! I loved Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet together. If you’re looking for a mystery story that flows and escalates well and presents a parade of interesting characters and locales, Dimitrios is for you. It’s also always nice to see Lorre in the lead.

Where to Watch: The DVD is available from the Warner Archive. (So, once again, local library or video store might have  copy.)

Strait-Jacket (1964)

19 January 1964 | 93 min. | B&W

Directed by William Castle

Written by Robert Bloch

Starring Diane Baker and Joan Crawford

I mentioned in my Joan Crawford CUTS post that I’d been meaning to see this for years. My enjoyment of the film didn’t suffer a bit from that length of anticipation.

I like William Castle’s movies a lot. I like the campy humor and quirky stories. This one is campy still, but not as heavy on the humor--unless you have a real weird sense of humor. That’s not a strike against Strait-Jacket though. Castle builds so much tension that by the end of the film, you feel like anyone could be axe-murdered at any moment, which becomes absurdly fun. The ending might be a little predictable, but it’s fun to go along for the ride. I didn’t particularly like the tacked on ending but I guess every JC movie needs to end on JC?

Largely unrelated, but if you’re a Castle fan, have you checked out his TV show Ghost Story/Circle of Fear? The first episode, The New House, in particular is top notch.

Where to Watch: It’s on Blu-ray and DVD from Sony (your local library or video store might have a copy) and it’s for rent on Amazon Prime. It’s also still on-demand via TCM for another few days.

One I didn’t write up: Cairo (1942). I brought up in my Jeanette MacDonald post that I was hoping to find a MacDonald film I enjoyed watching on her Summer Under the Stars day and I did!

#monthly roundup #month in review #Film Review #film recommendation #movie review #movie recommendations #2010s #2018 #Teen Titans #Teen Titans Go #Teen Titans Go To The Movies #1930s #pre-code #doctor x #the half-naked truth #cuban love song #the cuban love song #lupe velez #lee tracy #kolchak #the night stalker #kino lorber #the night strangler #television #70s tv #tv #tv movie #1970s #the mask of dimitrios #1940s

[wineanddinosaur]

How Trader Joe’s Turned the Wine Aisle on Its Head and Helped Create the Modern Grocery Store

Shopping for supermarket wine is an American pastime. And while some of us have always loved the act of buying groceries, pandemic restrictions on “nonessential” activities have made our weekly outings to the market all the more exciting.

Benjamin Lorr, author of “The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket,” says that for many adults, grocery stores are like amusement parks. And while there are lots of reasons the supermarket became what it is today, one thing was fundamental to its success: alcohol. Booze, and specifically wine, played an especially important role in the rise of one of America’s favorite grocery stores: Trader Joe’s.

According to Lorr, Trader Joe’s changed the game for supermarket wine, making it the sessionable vino we know and love today. VinePair talked with Lorr about the role of wine in the modern American grocery store, and how Trader Joe’s played a key part in increasing Americans’ access to quality, affordable wine.

1. What inspired you to write “The Secret Life of Groceries”?

There were two paths to this book. One was that I’ve just loved grocery stores my whole life. They are this almost hallucinogenic place that I go to on a daily or weekly basis, with saturated colors on the shelves, as well as a large volume of different objects all screaming from the shelves. They’re simultaneously comforting and menacing. There’s something very powerful about them, and I wanted to scratch the surface behind that.

I don’t want to get too grandiose here, but the grocery store, to me, is this small stand-in for the civil project writ large. This is what we’ve created to meet our needs. It is pretty absurdly impressive when you look back on the human project — the amount of choice, abundance, low price, and high quality is so routine, we take those things completely for granted.

The short story was that I was working on my last book, which was about Bikram yoga and understanding why people were attracted to that as an obsessive pursuit. And in the middle of writing that book, I was trying to get close to this guru and spend time with him, so I went to one of his teacher trainings, where people are locked in a hotel complex for nine weeks doing gobs of yoga, and they would let them out to go to the grocery store. I watched these yogis, grown adults, descend on a Trader Joe’s, and I had never seen happiness like that in adults. There was just this maniacal glee, like adults going to an amusement park, and I think something just clicked.

2. What was Trader Joe’s initial strategy when it came to wine?

Joe [Coulombe] founded Trader Joe’s in 1958, and he realized pretty quickly that he couldn’t compete against big firms that had the power. So he chose to reinvent along several interesting angles, one of which was that he realized that, as the GI Bill promised college education to people who weren’t previously allowed to get one, that more consumers were going to [go to college] — and that was going to change their tastes and what they wanted to buy. Similarly, he saw that travel was increasing. He thought cheap international airfare was going to create customers who wanted items on the shelf that reflected their travel and their education.

Likewise, he thought that network TV offered only one, homogenous advertising experience, and then people would all look at the same TV shows and they would all buy the same giant brands. He just thought that this new consumer wouldn’t want that. So he started to build Trader Joe’s for consumers that are educated, exposed to travel, and who want options that aren’t in that mainstream.

That sounds easy, but he really didn’t have a clue how to do that. The place that he got probably the biggest indication — he calls it the most important decision he made as a marketer — all came from studying wine.

Wine represented a place where the typical rules that govern grocery stores didn’t apply. Shoppers understood that wine changes by vintage, not by brand. Each year, it changes, and it’s in limited supply. It’s scarce, and it’s risky when you’re a buyer, because you have to rely on taste, rather than preconceived notions. Whereas if you’re buying Bounty paper towels or Coca-Cola, it doesn’t matter, because these are bombed out in such consistency.

The wine industry really opened his eyes to the possibility of marketing all foods like wine. When you’re a consumer, you find a good wine shop, and then you start to trust the owner of that [store]. You don’t necessarily try to master everything as a consumer. Using that as a frame for a grocery store was very novel at the time. The idea that you would find trust in a grocery store, and then they would bring you options, was a shift that he was really interested in getting people to do.

3. What role did Trader Joe’s play in bringing affordable and quality wine to American consumers via the grocery store?

California is governed by a series of laws called Fair Trade, which essentially is out to defend small chains and prevent volume buying, where you could sell products at a loss and then outsell your competitor. Fair Trade said that you have to sell foreign wine at the price that the importer imports it. Essentially what that means is that all grocery stores sold wine at the same exact price. There was no way to compete on price, which is why Joe originally opened up with 17 varieties, which at the time represented this enormous bounty of California wines.

But as Joe started to study the regulatory apparatus, he realized there was this loophole: If he could find an importer to bring in wine and ask that importer to post a price of his or her choosing, the importer could post one that was less than the dominant market. Joe found that if he got an importer to post a price, he could actually sell the wine at that price. So Joe found a friendly importer who posted wine prices way lower than anyone else in the state of California. This shattered the price of wine, and Trader Joe’s went on to sell the cheapest bottles of [international] wine in the state.

Because of that, Trader Joe’s became the leading retailer of imported wine in all of California in just a few years. He was selling Latour for $5.99, or Pichon-Longueville Lalande for $3.50. These were crazy prices for these bottles of wine because he could get his importer to post them for whatever he wanted. And he took a loss on those bottles.

4. Talk to me about Two Buck Chuck.

Joe really put an emphasis on getting his buyers to master wine from a taste perspective. There were times when they were pulling about 60 corks a week. At the Trader Joe’s central office, they had a courtyard, and he built a small tasting table in the backyard, and put up a spittoon. It just encouraged people to drink as much wine as possible, so they could learn about all different types.

The reason that matters is that I don’t think that their good luck with Two Buck Chuck can be called “luck.” It was really based on this wealth of experience in the wine industry. Two Buck Chuck was this deal that they struck, very much structured around how they could sell a very cheap bottle of wine. But it wasn’t something that a competitor could necessarily imitate, because they had a wealth of knowledge about what a good wine tasted like, and what consumers were looking for from a good wine.

So they were trying to sell an extremely drinkable, very friendly, frictionless wine that’s not exactly bad, but it’s not exactly good, either. And that’s a selling point. They knew how to find that wine, and they knew how to develop it, whereas if Target or Whole Foods or Safeway had tried to develop a wine like that, they would have whiffed, because they would have had to rely on people who weren’t as qualified.

5. What did Trader Joe’s do differently in terms of its wine selection and food selection?

Trader Joe’s has a much smaller product selection than a traditional grocery store. By shrinking the number of offerings, you can then give your buyers a chance to spend time learning about those items and putting tastes forward. Trader Joe’s is famous for private labeling things, which gives them a chance to create slightly individualized offerings around these products.

Wine is no different. Of course, it can be private labeled, and can be mixed to taste. So that same process of honing in on items and then getting expertise plays for wine as well.

6. What did Trader Joe’s do differently in terms of its management and treatment of employees and suppliers?

[Before he founded Trader Joe’s], when Joe Coulombe was running a convenience store, he decided really early on, ”Life’s too short, I want to work with better, more interesting people.” And so he pays his employees more money. He has the highest-paid employees, and that started because he decided to pay his workers average California family income levels.

This was the late ’50s, early ’60s. At that time, an individual employee tended to be a man and the sole breadwinner of the family. So individual employee income was family income. There weren’t a lot of women in the workplace. Then in the ’60s and ’70s, that shifted. Women entered the workplace, and family income went way up because there were a lot of two-breadwinner houses.

But Joe was kind of stubborn, and he just had this idea that he was going to stick with paying his individual employees average California family income levels. All of a sudden, he’s paying these people much higher than market rate in an industry that used to be paying people less, so he has access to a much better quality of employee.

7. Who is “Trader Joe” and what was it like interviewing him for this book?

Oh, it was such a pleasure. Sadly, he is no longer with us. He died in February of this year. But he was a really brilliant guy.

He could see around corners. He could make connections between different things. I started off the Trader Joe’s section of this book pretty cynical. I thought with Trader Joe’s — because it seems like it offered healthy food at cheap prices and all the employees were happy — that something’s too good to be true here.

And the book itself gets pretty dark in places, but it was really a pleasure to meet Joe and realize that a big reason that Trader Joe’s is so successful was because he was just brilliant, and he saw the world differently, and he valued things like paying people a decent wage, creativity, and creating options that were individualized and would meet his consumers’ desires.

I think a lot of that did come from his experience, with his ability to see things and invest in learning about them. Wine is the best example of that. He did not grow up a wine drinker. When he founded Trader Joe’s, he would drink cooking sherry to relax. He was not a gourmand, but he realized wine was going to be big, and he decided he was going to learn about it. He poured himself into wine — pulling 60 corks a day sometimes — and just learning as much as he could. That gives you a sense of the type of guy he was.

Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The article How Trader Joe’s Turned the Wine Aisle on Its Head and Helped Create the Modern Grocery Store appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/benjamin-lorr-trader-joes-supermarket-wine/

[chiseler]

Stolen Faces

Cinema is an art of faces, almost a religion of faces: on screen they loom above us, vast as a mother’s face must appear to an infant. We can get lost in them. The deepest thrill the movies offer may be the opportunity to gaze at human faces longer and with more unabashed, lover-like intimacy than real life regularly allows. Most often, of course, we gaze at beautiful faces, though cinema has its share of beloved gargoyles, mugs with “character” rather than symmetry. But the uncanny power of faces onscreen also anchors films about disfigurement and facial transformations, about masks and scars and plastic surgery. These stories summon all the fears and taboos, desires and unresolved questions swirling around the human face. Do faces reveal or conceal a person’s true nature? Can changing someone’s face change their soul?

Deformity is a staple of horror films, of course, from classics such as Phantom of the Opera and The Raven (in which the hideously afflicted man played by Boris Karloff muses, “Maybe if a man looks ugly, he does ugly things”) to surgical shockers such as Eyes Without a Face. But plot twists involving faces that are damaged or corrected, masked or changed, turn up with surprising frequency in film noir as well, where they are related to themes of identity theft, amnesia, desperate attempts to shed the past or recover the past. One of the grim proverbs of noir is that you can’t escape yourself. There are no fresh starts, no second chances. But noir also demonstrates the instability of identity, the way character can be corrupted, and stories about facial transformations harbor a nebulous fear that there is in the end no fixed self. If noir is pessimistic about the possibility of change, it is at the same time haunted by fear of change—fear of looking in the mirror and seeing a stranger.

The Truth of Masks

Two films about men who literally lose their faces take the full measure of the resulting ostracism and crushing isolation—and what men will do to escape it. Hiroshi Teshigahara’s The Face of Another (Tanin no Kao, 1966) is based on a Kobo Abe novel about a scientist named Okuyama who has been literally defaced by a chemical accident. We never see what he used to look like; he spends half the film swaddled in bandages like Claude Rains in The Invisible Man, ferocious black eyes glinting through slits. Obsessed with people’s reactions to his appearance, he lashes out bitterly, insisting that all his social ties have been severed, including his conjugal ties with his wife. She tries to convince him that it’s all in his head and that her feelings haven’t changed, but her revulsion when he makes an abrupt sexual advance convinces him that she’s lying.

Okuyama believes that a life-like mask will restore his relationship with his wife and his connection to society. He has evidently not seen The Face Behind the Mask (1941), a terrific B noir in which Peter Lorre stars as Johnny Szabo, who is hideously scarred in a fire. This tragedy and the ensuing cruelty of strangers transform him from a sweet, Chaplin-esque immigrant to a bitter criminal mastermind, even after he dons a powder-white mask that gives him a sad, creepy ghost of his former face—more Lorre than Lorre.  The mask is merely a flimsy patch on the horrible visage that spiritually scars Johnny, and though it enables him to marry a sweet and loving (and perhaps near-sighted) woman, it can’t reverse the corrosion of his character.  

The doctor who makes a far more sophisticated mask for Okuyama does so because the project fascinates him as a psychological and philosophical experiment. He speculates about what the world would be like if everyone wore a mask: morality would not exist, he argues, since people would feel no responsibility for the actions of their alternate identities. (His theory seems to be borne out by the consequences of internet anonymity.) Unlike the one Johnny Szabo wears, here the mask bears no resemblance to Okuyama’s original looks, and the doctor believes the new face will change his patient’s personality, turning him into someone else.

When the mask is fitted, it turns out to be the face of Tatsuya Nakadai, one of the most striking and plastic pans in cinema history. With only a little help from a fake mole, dark glasses, and a bizarre fringe of beard, Nakadai succeeds in making his own features look eerily synthetic, as though they don’t belong to him. Sitting in a crowded beer hall on his first masked outing in public, he creates a palpable sense of unease, keeping his features unnaturally still as though unsure of their mobility, touching his skin gingerly to explore its alien surface. As he gradually grows more comfortable and revels in the freedom of his new face, the doctor tells him, “It’s not the beer that’s made you drunk, it’s the mask.”

Abe’s novel contains a scene in which the protagonist goes to an exhibit of Noh masks, highly stylized crystallizations of stock characters and emotions. In Noh, as in other traditional forms of theater that use masks, the actor is present on stage but vanishes into another physical being—men play women, young men play old men, gods, and ghosts. In cinema, actors impersonate other characters using their own faces—usually without even the heavy layer of makeup worn on western stages. Movie actors are pretending to be people they’re not, yet if we judge their performances good it means we believe what we see in their faces. When an actor’s real face plays the part of a mask, like Lorre’s or Nakadai’s, this strange inversion—the real impersonating the artificial—has a uniquely disconcerting effect.

At the heart of this disturbing film lurks a horror that changing the skin can indeed change the soul. Okuyama tries to hold onto his identity, insisting, “I am who I am, I can’t change,” but the doctor insists he is “a new man,” with “no records, no past.” In covering his scar tissue with a smooth, artificial skin he eradicates his own experience, and with it his humanity. The doctor turns out to be right when he predicts that the mask will have a mind of its own. Suddenly endowed with sleek good looks, Okuyama buys flashy suits and sets out to seduce his own wife. When he succeeds easily, he is outraged, only to have her reveal that she knew who he was all along. After she leaves him in disgust he descends into madness and random violence. He has become the opposite of the Invisible Man: a visible shell with nothing inside

Okuyama’s story is interwoven with a subplot about a radiation-scarred girl from Nagasaki, whose social isolation drives her to incest and suicide. Lovely from one side, repellent from the other, she looks very much like the protagonist of A Woman’s  Face. Ingrid Bergman starred in the Swedish original, but Joan Crawford is ideally cast in the 1941 Hollywood remake directed by George Cukor. Half beautiful and half grotesque, half hard-boiled and half vulnerable, Anna Holm spells out what was usually inchoate in Crawford’s paradoxical presence. A childhood fire has left her with a gnarled scar on one side of her face, like a black diseased root growing across her cheek and distorting her eye and mouth. Crawford makes us feel Anna’s agonizing humiliation when people look at her, which spurs her compulsive mannerisms of turning her head aside, lifting her hand to her cheek, or pulling her hair down.

Also perfectly cast is Conrad Veidt as the elegant, sinister Torsten Baring. Veidt went from German Expressionist horror—playing the goth heartthrob Cesar in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and the grotesquely disfigured yet weirdly alluring hero of The Man Who Laughs—to an unexpected late-career run as a sexy leading man in cloak-and-dagger films such as The Spy in Black and Contraband. When Anna turns her head defiantly to reveal her scar, Torsten gazes at her with a gleam of excitement, even of perverse attraction. She is confused and touched by his kindness and gallantry, helplessly trying to hide her sensitivity beneath a tough façade. Her broken-up, uncertain expressions when he gives her flowers or kisses her hand count as some of the most delicate acting Crawford ever did. Anna assumes that Torsten, the penniless scion of a rich family, must want her to do some dirty work, and she turns out to be right, but he also genuinely appreciates the proud, bitter, lonely woman who faces down her miserable lot through sheer strength of will.

People are horrible to Anna, nastily mocking her wounded vanity and her attempts to look nice. “The world was against me,” she says, “All right, I’d be against it.” She has found the perfect outlet, blackmailing pretty women who commit adultery. In one of the film’s best scenes, the spoiled and kittenish wife she is threatening retaliates by shining a lamp in Anna’s face and laughing at her. Anna leaps at the woman and starts hitting her over and over, forehand and backhand, in an ecstasy of hatred. This savagely satisfying moment is derailed by the film’s first grossly contrived plot twist, as the encounter is interrupted by the woman’s husband, who happens to be a plastic surgeon specializing in correcting facial scars. He offers to operate on Anna, and once the bandages are removed, in a scene orchestrated for maximum suspense, an absurdly flawless face is revealed.

The doctor (Melvyn Douglas) calls her both his Galatea and his Frankenstein: he views her as his creation, but isn’t sure if she’s an ideal woman or an unholy monster, “a beautiful face with no heart.” Her dilemma is ultimately which man to please, whose approval to seek: the doctor who believes her character should be corrected now that her face is, or Torsten, who wants her to kill the young nephew who stands between him and the family estate. This overwrought turn is never plausible; it is always obvious that Anna is no child murderer. What is believable is her erotic thrall to Torsten, the first man who has ever shown an interest in her. Crawford is at her most unguarded in these moments of trembling desire; Cukor remarked on how “the nearer the camera, the more tender and yielding she became.” He speculated that the camera was her true lover.

Anna undergoes months of pain and uncertainty for the chance of being beautiful for Torsten, and there is a marvelous shot of her gazing at herself in a mirror as she prepares to surprise him with her new face, brimming with hard proud joy. But he winds up lamenting the surgery that has turned her into “a mere woman, soft and warm and full of love,” he sneers. “I thought you were something different—strong, exciting, not dull, mediocre, safe.” In this same speech, Torsten reveals himself as a cartoonish fascist megalomaniac, which fits in with the film’s slide into silly, flimsily scripted melodrama, but sadly obscures the radical spark of what he’s saying. Anna’s character is shaped by the way she looks, or rather by the way she is looked at by men; the disappointingly conventional ending sides with the man who equates flawless beauty with moral goodness, and against the one man who was able to see something fine—a “hard, shining brightness,” in a woman’s damaged and imperfect face.

A Stolen Face (1952) follows a similar premise, much less effectively, and reaches the opposite conclusion. Paul Henreid plays a plastic surgeon who operates on female criminals with disfiguring scars, convinced that once they look normal they will become contented law-abiding citizens. He gets carried away, however, sculpting one patient into a dead ringer for his lost love (Lizabeth Scott plays both the original and the copy) and marrying her. His attempt to play Pygmalion backfires, since the vulgar, mean-spirited and untrustworthy ex-con is unchanged by her new appearance: she is indeed “a beautiful face without a heart.” That is a succinct definition of the femme fatale, a type Lizabeth Scott often played and one that embodies a fascination with the deceptiveness of feminine beauty. In The Big Heat (1953), it is only when Debbie (Glora Grahame) has her pretty face rearranged by a pot of scalding coffee that she abandons her cynical self-interest to become an avenging angel, fearlessly punishing the corrupt who hide their greed behind a genteel façade. She has nothing left to lose; pulling a gun from her mink coat and plugging the woman she recognizes as her evil “sister,” the disfigured Debbie asserts her freedom: “I never felt better in my life.”

Blessings in Disguise

Sometimes, people are only too happy to lose their faces. Dr. Richard Talbot (Kent Smith), the protagonist of the superb, underappreciated drama Nora Prentiss (1947), sees the bright side when his face is horribly burned in a car crash. He has already faked his own death, sending another man’s corpse over a cliff in a burning car. In a neat bit of poetic irony, by crashing his own car he has completed the process of destroying his identity, and no longer needs to fear he’ll be recognized. Losing his face is a blessing in disguise—or rather, a blessing of disguise. But the disfigurement is also a visual representation of the corruption of his character: his face changes to reflect his downward metamorphosis with almost Dorian Gray-like precision.

Car crashes are a kind of refrain in the film. The doctor’s routine existence veers off course when a taxi knocks down a nightclub singer, Nora Prentiss (Anne Sheridan), across the street from his San Francisco office. Talk about a happy accident: the nice guy trapped in an ice-cold marriage to a rigid, nagging martinet suddenly has a gorgeous, good-humored young woman stretched out on his examining table. Nora may sing for a living, but her real vocation is dishing out wisecracks (her first words on coming to are, “There must be an easier way to get a taxi.”) When the doctor mentions a paper he’s writing on “ailments of the heart,” the canary, her eyelids dropping under the weight of knowingness, quips, “A paper? I could write a book.”

It’s hard to imagine a more sympathetic pair of adulterers, but the doctor is so daunted by the prospect of asking his wife for a divorce that it seems simpler to use the convenient death of a patient in his office to stage his own demise and flee to New York with Nora. It’s soon clear, though, that some part of him did die in San Francisco. Cooped up in a New York hotel room, terrified of going out lest someone spot him, the formerly gentle man becomes an irascible, rude, nervous wreck. When the faithful and incredibly patient Nora goes back to singing for Phil Dinardo (Robert Alda), the handsome nightclub owner who loves her, Talbot becomes hysterically jealous. Unshaven and hollow-eyed, he slaps Nora and almost kills Dinardo before fleeing the police and heading into that fiery crash. He becomes, as the film’s evocative French title has it, L’Amant sans Visage, “the lover without a face.”

When his bandages are removed, he is unrecognizable, wizened and scarred, his face a creased and calloused mask. His own wife doesn’t know him, and when Nora visits him in prison his damaged face, shot through a tight wire mesh, looks like something decaying, dissolving. He’s in prison because, in an even neater bit of irony, he has been charged with his own murder. He decides to take the rap, recognizing the justice of the mistake: he did kill Richard Talbot.

This same ironic plot twist appears in Strange Impersonation (1946), albeit less convincingly. This deliriously far-fetched tale, directed at a breakneck pace by Anthony Mann, stars Brenda Marshall as Nora Goodrich, a pretty scientist whose glasses signal that she is both brainy and emotionally myopic. She is harshly punished for caring more about work than marriage: her female lab assistant, who wants to steal Nora’s fiancé, tampers with an experiment so that it explodes, burning Nora’s face to a crisp. Embittered, she retreats from the world, and when another woman, who is trying to blackmail her over a car accident, falls from the window and is mistakenly identified as Nora, she seizes the opportunity to disappear, have plastic surgery that miraculously eliminates her scars, and return posing as the blackmailer, to seek revenge. She goes to work for her former fiancé, who strangely fails to recognize her voice or her striking resemblance to his lost love.

The plot plays out as, and turns out to be, a fever dream, but this last credibility stretcher is too common to dismiss as merely the flaw of one potboiler. Plots involving impersonation and identity theft rely not only on unrealistic visions of what plastic surgery can achieve, but on the assumption that people are deeply unobservant and tone-deaf in recognizing loved ones. A film that underlines this blindness with droll irony is The Scar (a.k.a. Hollow Triumph and The Man Who Murdered Himself, 1948), a convoluted but hugely entertaining little B noir in which Paul Henreid plays dual roles as a crook on the run and a psychologist who happens to look just like him. John Muller, pursued by hit men sent by a casino owner he robbed, stumbles across his doppelganger and decides to kill him and take his place. All he needs to do is give himself a facial scar to match the doctor’s. Only as he is dumping the body does he notice that he has put the scar on the wrong cheek—the consequence of an accidentally reversed photograph. But the irony quickly doubles back: Muller decides to brazen it out, and in fact no one notices that the doctor’s scar has apparently moved from one side of his face to the other—not even his lover. (Joan Bennett glides through this awkward part in a world-weary trance, giving a dry-martini reading to the script’s most famous lines: “It’s a bitter little world, full of sad surprises.”) The assumption that people pay little attention to the way others look or sound seems directly at odds with the power that faces and voices wield on film, and the intimate specificity with which we experience them. But noir stories often turn on how easily people are deceived, and how poorly they really know one another—or even themselves.

In The Long Wait (1954), perhaps the most extreme case of confused identity, a man with amnesia searches for a woman who has had plastic surgery. Not only does he not know what she looks like now, he can’t even remember what she used to look like. Since the movie is based on a Mickey Spillane story, he proceeds methodically by grabbing every woman he sees, in hopes that something will jog his memory. The film is fun in its pulpy, trashy way, provided you enjoy watching Anthony Quinn kiss women as though his aim were to throttle the life out of them. Quinn plays a man badly injured in a car wreck that erases both his memory and his fingerprints. This is lucky when he wanders into his old town and discovers he is wanted for a bank robbery—without fingerprints, they can’t arrest him. Figuring he must be innocent, he goes in search of the girlfriend who may or may not have grabbed the money and gone under the knife. It’s an intriguing premise, but the ultimate revelation of the right woman feels arbitrary, and the implications of all this confusion of identities are left resolutely unexamined. Nonetheless, there is something in the film’s searing, inarticulate desperation that glints like a shattered mirror.

Under the Knife

The promise of plastic surgery is a new and better self, the erasure of years and the traces of life. Taken to extremes, it is the opportunity to become a different person. Probably the best known plastic surgery noir is Dark Passage (1947), in which Humphrey Bogart plays Vincent Parry, who visits a back alley doctor after escaping from San Quentin. Parry was framed for killing his wife, so the face plastered across newspapers with the label of murderer has become a false face that betrays him. A friendly cabby who spots him recommends a surgeon who is he promises is “no quack.” Houseley Stevenson’s gleeful turn as the back-alley doctor is unforgettable, as he sharpens a straight razor while philosophizing about how all human life is rooted in fear of pain and death. He can’t resist scaring Parry, chortling over what he could do to a patient he didn’t like: make him look like a bulldog, or a monkey. But he reassures Parry that he’ll make him look good: “I’ll make you look as if you’ve lived.”

During the operation, Parry’s drugged consciousness becomes a kaleidoscope of faces, all the people who have threatened or helped him swirling around. His face is being re-shaped, as his life has already been shaped by others: the bad woman who framed him and the good woman who rescues and protects him, the small-time crook who menaces him and the kind cabby who helps him. Faceless for much of the movie, mute for part of it (he spends a long time in constraining bandages), Vincent Parry is among the most passive and cipher-like of noir protagonists. When the bandages finally come off after surgery, he looks like Humphrey Bogart, and the idea that this famously beat-up, lived-in face could be the creation of plastic surgery is perhaps the film’s biggest joke. But Vincent Parry remains an oddly blank, undefined character, and he seems unchanged by his new face and name. In a sense the doctor is right: he only looks as though he’s lived.

The fullest cinematic exploration of the problems inherent in trying to make a new life through plastic surgery is Seconds (1966), John Frankenheimer’s flesh-creeping sci-fi drama about a mysterious company that offers clients second lives. For a substantial fee, they will fake your death, make you over completely—including new fingerprints, teeth, and vocal cords—and create an entirely new identity for you. There is never a moment in the movie when this seems like a good idea. The Saul Bass credits, in which human features are stretched and distorted in extreme close-up, instills a horror of plasticity, and disorienting camera-work creates an immediate feeling of unease and dislocation, a physical discomfort at being in the wrong place.

Arthur, a businessman from Scarsdale, is the personification of disappointed middle age, afflicted by profound anomie that goes beyond a dull routine and a tired marriage. When the Company finishes its work—the process is shown in gruesome detail, to the extent that Frankenheimer’s cameraman fainted while shooting a real rhinoplasty—the formerly nondescript and greying Arthur looks like Rock Hudson, and has a new life as a playboy painter in Malibu. He’s told that he is free, “alone in the world, absolved of all responsibility.” He has “what every middle-aged man in America wants: freedom.”

At first, however, his life proves as empty and meaningless in this new setting as it was in the old; even when the Frankenstein scars have healed, he remains nervous and joyless as before. After he meets and falls for a beautiful blonde neighbor, who introduces him to a very 1960s California lifestyle, he begins to revel in youth and sensual freedom. Yet something is still not right; at a cocktail party he gets drunk and starts talking about his former existence—a taboo. He discovers that his lover, indeed almost everyone he knows, is an employee of the company or a fellow “reborn,” hired to create a fake life for him, and to keep him under surveillance. His “freedom” is a construct, tightly controlled.

Arthur rebels, making a forbidden trip to visit his wife, who of course does not recognize him. Talking to her about her supposedly deceased husband, for the first time he begins to understand himself: the depth of his alienation and confusion, the fact that he never really knew what he wanted, and so wanted the things he had been told he should want. Seconds is a scathing attack on the American ideal of a successful life, a portrait of how corporations sell fantasies of youth, beauty, happiness, love; buying into these commercial dreams, no one is really free to know what they want, or even who they are. Will Geer, as the folksy, sinister founder of the Company, talks wistfully about how he simply wanted to make people happy.

There is a deep sadness in the scenes where Arthur revisits his old home and confronts the failure of his attempt at rebirth—beautifully embodied by Rock Hudson in a performance suffused with the melancholy of a man who has spent his life hiding his real identity behind a mask. Yet Arthur still imagines that if he can have another new start, a third face and identity, he will get it right. Instead, he learns the macabre secret of how the Company goes about swapping out people’s identities. Seconds contrasts the surgical precision with which faces, bodies, and the trappings of life can be remade, and the impossibility of determining or predicting how or if the inner self will be changed. For that there are no charts or diagrams, and no knife that can cut deep enough.

by Imogen Sara Smith

#Imogen Sara Smith #The Chiseler #stolen faces #joan crawford #noir #secondrock hudson #lauren bacall