#that art at the top was like...the first time I ever drew duncan and only the second time I'd ever drawn jacob

[cylidaeold]

Okay, here is an explanation of Kota's hyperfixations that nobody asked for! So, essentially, the characters I connect with are technically from media, but I spin them into my own thing. Essentially, what I do is write them as if everything that happened in canon did actually happen, but there's a whole 'nother more interesting plot line going on behind the scenes. I pretty much always give them abusive parents, S/A trauma, and a dead loved one (usually a sibling for some reason). This is projection (except for the sibling thing. I'm an only child, why do I do that?). I adopt these characters as my own. I build them lore, redesign them to fit my perception, and even commission art of them. I had Charm uploaded to Toyhouse for a while because I knew nobody had read Story Thieves, so I could get away with it.

Obviously, anybody who knows me knows that I adore Peter. He's definitely the character with the most lore out of any of them. He's probably my favorite character from anything ever, but my other babies aren't actually too far behind him, despite what you may think. Let's make a list, shall we?

THE HIGH COUNCIL

These are the ones where I could probably be clinically diagnosed as obsessive for. I adore them more than words can express.

-Peter (Divergent):

The ultimate baby. Come on, you know I adore this little gremlin. I write about him constantly, and he has too many AUs for me to keep track of. If I were to switch up some of the other Divergent character's names, I could genuinely pass him off as my OC at this point. I adopted him as a hyperfixation in 6th grade (When I was 10), so he's been my ultimate baby boy for five years. (I read Divergent before that point, but I didn't think much of him then.)

-Charm (Story Thieves):

My first fictional crush and gay awakening. I don't know why I love her so much. Maybe because she was the first deeply tragic character that I ever got to read about. Maybe because her beating up people just made me giggle. Maybe because she's just kind of hot. Either way, I took on Charm as a hyperfixation very early on in life. I remember being in third grade and seeing somebody with a Story Thieves book and thinking "Oh, I read those books a while ago! I like Charm!" so it was a few years before I was eight. Five or six, maybe? Either way, she was my first obsession, and I love her dearly.

-Courtney (Total Drama):

Ah, Courtney. The subject of almost as much of my fanfiction as Peter. She's a complicated one to talk about for me. I remember I first watched Total Drama three or four years ago, but I wasn't obsessed with Courtney then. I remember that she was my favorite character, but that's about as far as my affections went. That changed when I started getting involved in the Total Drama fandom space. I'm struggling to define exactly what changed about her for me. I liked the good Catholic girl persona the fanbase gave her, the numerous daddy issues, and her chemistry with Duncan. It was all just fun. I ended up getting a burning desire to rewatch the show, so I did. It was only about six months ago that I really took her on as a hyperfixation, but my traumadumping on her pushed her to the top.

THE TOP BLORBOS

Little guys who I love, but don't think about constantly. I'll draw them every so often and give them a bit of lore, but mostly they're just little guys that I like a lot.

-Shawn (Total Drama):

I have no explanation for this one. I think watching so much Total Drama just got to my head, and I latched onto a random character. Either way, there's no excuse for the three times I've fully rendered this man and the math book that is filled with sketches of him. I mean filled in the truest sense possible. I drew him in so many places that I ran out of space to fit even the smallest Shawn.

-Clove + Cato (Hunger Games):

Again, I don't have much of an explanation for this one. I just think that they're a lot of fun. I love the idea of them falling in love either before the games or during them, and it's such a tragic love story. I want to write an AU where one (or both) of them wins the games.

-Cassidy (And maybe Dick) (Veronica Mars):

I just love a tragic villain, and Cassidy fits that role to a T for me. I love him dearly, and think that there would have been so much potential had he stayed alive. Dick's reaction to his death is heartbreaking and added a new dimension to this, frankly, 0-dimensional character.

-???:

Who is it? What is it? I don't know. I can't put it into words. The things that bring forth this feeling, though, are Dream SMP, that biblically accurate angel god from Cult of the Lamb, and a few of my friend's OCs. I've tried to create and find characters that fit this strange feeling, but I can't. It's always out of reach, but I'm still fond of it despite "it" not being anything.

THE ANCIENTS:

These are my children, who I've lost interest in but obsessed over for years. I still think about them and am still fond of them, but they aren't obsessions or anything close to that anymore.

-Cat (OC)

Perhaps the only OC on this list. Cat was my main OC and all that I thought about for several years, but I just fell out of love with them eventually. Now they bring up some bad memories for me, and I'm happy to leave them in storage.

-Susie (Deltarune): I like women who can beat me up! This one lasted around a year. She was my homescreen on my phone and computer for a while, and I got my cousins to fall in love with her too. She's just a fun character. I don't think about her much anymore, but she's still one I'm attached to.

-Jamilton (Ship, Hamilton the musical):

Look, I'm not proud of this one, but it would be deceptive to not include it. I've read more of this pairing on ao3 than any others, I have fanart that will never see the light of day, and I thought about them constantly for over two years. I still have a soft spot for this ship, but it's not an obsession anymore (thank God).

-Darkstalker (Wings of Fire):

Ohhhh boy. I had the biggest crush on this stupid dragon for years and years. The longest out of anybody on this list, if I'm being honest. I was a horrible Darkstalker defender for a while, and actually built a dedicated shrine in my room for him. He kind of gives me the ick now because of all this.

-Varian (Tangled the Series):

BABY BOY! Honestly, I'm tempted to just spam baby boy and let it devolve into keyboard smashing, because that is the only way to describe how I feel about this character. The little guy!

-Tom (Star Versus the Forces of Evil): He's the only reason I watched the show. My first watchthough of it was actually just me reading which episodes he's in on Wikipedia and then only watching those. Was I confused? Yes. But I loved him!

-Finleap (Warriors): I can't explain this at all. I just thought he was cute in AVoS, so he became my favorite warrior cat. He still is, but mostly because of nostalgia. He takes up zero braincells now, to be honest.

-Tax (Hunger Games):

This one is a joke... I think. He's a character that gets one mention throughout the entire series. I thought it'd be funny to call him my favorite character so that everybody was like "Who?" but I ended up with actual backstory ideas. Either way, I love him.

THE FLEETING

Characters that I obsessed over for around a week to a few months, then it faded. I'm still fond of most of them.

-Red Son (LEGO Monkie Kid):

What a silly little man! I really like him! That's all I can really say. I've written him some AUs, and I just had fun whenever he was on the screen. He's a good time.

-Bea (Night in the Woods):

She's just well-written. I like shipping her with Mae, too. She's a cool character, and I still have a bit of a crush. She feels so realistic and a bit tragic.

-Klaus (Umbrella Academy): Traumatized gay drug addict? Count me in! He's the only one in this section with his own fleshed-out backstory written by me. I think about him the most out of everybody in this section and still really love him.

THE APPRENTICES

Characters that I'm building an obsession with, but they aren't quite there yet.

-Narinder, Baal and Aym (Cult of the Lamb): Just a demon dad and his babies! I'm giving this one a few months before I really consider it an obsession, but I do really love them!

-Ethan (Never Have I Ever):

What a silly man! He's hot, and you know I love the bad boys. This could just be a fleeting emo boy thing, or we could have a deeper connection. We'll see.

THE SIDEKICKS

These are characters that I only like in relation to another character.

-Duncan (Total Drama):

Only with Courtney. They have the most fun dynamic of pretty much any ship. I really love them together, and Duncan's fun with her.

-Pretty much every Divergent character:

I love them in relation to Peter! Especially Caleb and Molly. I like most of these characters fine on their own, but I love the Peter dynamics.

-Mae (Night in the Woods): She's a great and relatable character, but I honestly only like her to ship with Bea.

-Kris (Deltarune):

Is Kris even a character at all? They're just kind of the player. Either way, I ship them with Susie and I love it.

-Jasmine (Total Drama): I just like the idea of Shawn having a buff, tall girlfriend who doesn't understand him whatsoever. It's funny and cute.

THE UNWORTHY

Characters that were so close to being an obsession, but I lost interest just a bit too quickly for them to make a lasting impact.

-Logan (Veronica Mars): Okay, he's definitely my favorite of this group. He's such a funny little guy. Such a traumatized man, and it's hilarious that he keeps beating up people for Veronica. He's such a good boy, no matter what the show wants you to think.

-Hunter (The Owl House):

He's my favorite from the show, but I never connected to him on that deep level. I don't look at him and think of headcanons, I just look at him and think "Oh, he's neat."

-JD and Veronica (Heathers):

This is different from the others in this section because the interest never faded. I love them just as much now as I did a few years ago. It could never cross the obsession threshold, though.

-Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard (SIX): Yes, I am aware of K. Howard's real name, but I'm talking about the Six version here. They're just fun little traumatized gals who I ultimately couldn't fall in love with for whatever reason. Maybe because they're real people, and adding trauma seems weird.

-Princess Carolynn + Sara Lynn (Bojack Horseman): Both of these have a similar vibe. I love them and think that they're incredible characters, but the show is so good that there's nothing I can do with them. There's no way to break them further, no way to improve their story. They're just great.

-Kitty (Glee):

This may be a joke. I don't know at this point. She does have some trauma points going for her, so that's something. I just think the idea of this woman nearly murdering her classmate by purposely giving her an eating disorder, showing no remorse, waiting until they're about to die to confess, then immediately being forgiven, and the whole situation never being brought up again is really funny. She is absolutely awful, and I love her for it.

-Newt (Mazerunner):

When I was watching the Mazerunner movies, I was bored out of my mind. None of the characters had any... well- character. So jokingly, I said "Newt's my favorite character because at least he has a cool accent." Fast forward three movies and I'm sobbing over his death. Somewhere, my joke attachment became real attachment, and I don't know how.

-Connor (Dear Evan Hansen):

Emo boy! What else is there to say, really?

-Angel Dust (Hazbin Hotel):

Once again, emo boy! He's got trauma and shit. Trauma and shit is relatable and a nice coping mechanism.

-Harley Quinn (DC):

I connect with abuse victims. What else is there to say, really? Her story resonated with me.

-Minthe (Greek Mythology):

This one is basically an OC because she's got one mention in Greek myths. Again, this is a connecting to abuse victims thing. I really starting loving her after Lore Olympus, though. I read it and thought "Fuck you, that's a messed up portrayal of this poor woman," and vowed to write her better. I still have some comic book pages of that, actually.

-Every character from Hadestown:

This is the best musical I've ever seen, and the relationships are so fun. I'm invested in Hades and Persephone as well as Orpheus and Eurydice.

-Dee and Heavy (Metal Family):

I just like their dynamic. Plus, Dee is an emo boy. You know the drill at this point.

-Feather (OC):

My DND character. He's very fleshed out (over forty pages of lore). I really wanted to force myself to love him, but I just couldn't. There was a stretch where I was very fond of him, though.

-Torpedo (OC):

This was a character in an old roleplay game I did with my friends when we were little. I still really love most of these characters, but it's more of a nostalgic connection at this point.

-FTSRTD cast (OC):

I had fun with most of the cast, but I never connected to any as much as I did Cat. There was a period where Ezra was my favorite, but that passed quickly.

-Asriel (Undertale):

I don't know why he's so far down. This kid is fun and I wish I could save him. I've listened to every His Theme cover in existence, and I still crave more.

#help im insane

[carewyncromwell]

Jacob/Duncan

XDD Considering that this request came into my Askbox five times in rapid succession, I’m going to guess that someone REALLY wants to hear more about these two!! LOL!! Don’t worry, I will always love talking about my precious ghost boi and my book-smart, people-dumb spaceman. <3

Jacob/Duncan

Ship Theme: I Don’t Know How to Love Him (cover) by Helen Reddy 

Okay, so a lot of this is based just on back-story I’ve developed for my version of Jacob -- Jacob Cromwell -- and his Duncan, since I know there are plenty of people who don’t ship their Jacob with Duncan and there’s a lot the game leaves vague about these two and their past.

Much like Rowan and Carewyn, Duncan and Jacob were each other’s first real friend. Since Jacob’s father was a Muggle, Jacob didn’t learn that he was a wizard until after he received his Hogwarts letter, and so in grade school, he was largely (and kind of unfairly) seen as a delinquent troublemaker for the fights he’d get into with the people who tried to bully him and the magical outbursts that would sometimes ensue. Duncan, meanwhile, lost his mother at a very young age and subsequently had a huge falling-out with his father when he married another woman (who Duncan suspected his father had been romantically involved with while his mother was ill) mere months after his mother’s death. This made Duncan as a boy spend a lot of time with his mother’s parents, just to get away from his father and stepmother, and his maternal grandparents tutored him from their home since Duncan refused to be homeschooled by his new stepmother.

Duncan and Jacob first collided when the first years all had to take boats across the Lake with Hagrid to get to school, and Jacob and Duncan ended up in the same one. Jacob had been so enamored with the castle that he’d tripped over his own two feet and landed full on in Duncan’s lap. The two boys quickly dislodged, and Duncan rather bluntly asked if Jacob was Muggle-born. Jacob said no rather shortly, considering that the Muggle father he disliked so much had just walked out on his family, but within seconds any irritation in his expression was completely gone as he once again became entranced with the school they were approaching. Duncan kept shooting the weird boy looks the entire trip, thoroughly confused since even if the school was impressive, he probably wouldn’t look so love-struck by it himself. Duncan will likely never forget when the first years all entered the Great Hall and Jacob walked the entire way up the hall staring with an open-mouthed smile and starry eyes at all of the floating candles as if he were a kid at Christmas.

Because the two ended up in different houses (Slytherin and Ravenclaw), Duncan didn’t interact with Jacob again until they started having classes together. Jacob pretty quickly became the star pupil in just about every class, which both weirded Duncan out and irritated him considering that Jacob clearly hadn’t known anything about magic beforehand. Duncan probably would’ve nurtured cold resentment toward Jacob were it not for the Ravenclaw one day approaching Duncan in the library, randomly asking him seemingly out of nowhere about the location of the Slytherin commonroom. Duncan sputtered, perfectly bewildered, as Jacob -- in typical confident, airhead scholar fashion -- explained that he’d developed a theory that each of the four houses’ commonrooms were themed around a classical element, with Ravenclaw obviously being air, considering its eagle mascot and location high up in Ravenclaw Tower; Gryffindor being fire for its warm color scheme, Hufflepuff being earth for its association with Herbology and badgers, and therefore Slytherin being water. “Is your commonroom under the Lake?” Jacob pressed curiously. Duncan at first was very defensive about the question, declaring that his commonroom and its location were none of Jacob’s business and rather coolly adding that if Jacob even tried to sneak into the Slytherin commonroom, he’d probably get hexed by a couple dozen older students. Jacob contemplated this for a moment -- then, completely nonplussed, he said with a determined white smile, “...All right -- then I’ll just follow you! No sneaking necessary.” Jacob then proceeded to follow Duncan around for the rest of the day, much to Duncan’s utter exasperation -- but the incident, which did include Duncan actually holding the wall open long enough that Jacob could get a nice long look at his commonroom, made him realize two things about his classmate: 1, that Jacob Cromwell, however smart he was in class, was an absolute idiot; and 2, that he saw the world with a kind of depth and wonder that Duncan had never experienced before.

The two started sitting in class together, and through the years, Duncan found himself enjoying himself at school more and more, being around Jacob and his infectious fascination with everything. It made Duncan come out of his shell and become both snarkier and more prone to mischief -- and Jacob, ever enamored with excitement, was always thrilled to take part. Soon enough Jacob’s housemate Olivia joined their friend circle, and the three got into a lot of trouble and adventures while at school, especially once they started pursuing the Cursed Vaults.

It was circa fourth year that Duncan really started becoming aware of how deep his feelings for Jacob had gotten, but he was all too aware both of how ignorant Jacob was of them and of how intimidated he himself was, feeling them to begin with. Duncan’s grandparents -- the only family members he was still on good terms with -- were conservative enough that Duncan wasn’t sure how well they’d take him being interested in another guy, and Duncan and Jacob would get into petty arguments often enough that Duncan was afraid that their friendship wouldn’t last if they got serious and then broke up. Jacob, for his part, was completely unaware both of Duncan’s feelings for him and his own deepening feelings for Duncan, but subconsciously expressed them from time to time all the same.

One prominent example was when one of their yearmates, a Gryffindor named Sharon Edgecombe, tried to drug Duncan with a Love Potion so he’d ask her to a school dance. Fortunately Jacob figured out very quickly that Duncan’s drink had been compromised after catching a whiff of an unfamiliar smell and, after determining that Olivia, he, and Duncan each smelled different things, he pretty quickly deduced that it was a Love Potion. Without telling Olivia or Duncan, Jacob took some of the drugged drink with him and tried to dilute its ingredients to figure out who had sent the Potion, and he eventually found out that it would’ve made someone fall in love with Sharon Edgecombe. Furious, Jacob went up to the dance now in progress and confronted Sharon. Sharon rather unconvincingly denied having given Duncan the Love Potion, but once her date was out of ear-shot, she made the mistake of muttering under her breath that Jacob was just mad he hadn’t been smart enough to think of doing it first. Jacob in retaliation shoved Sharon so hard that she landed back-first into the punch bowl and brought the entire concession table down with her. Sharon’s date (a rather tough-looking Beater on the Hufflepuff Quidditch team) immediately whipped out his wand, preparing to attack Jacob, when who should come to his rescue but Duncan, who’d run over with Olivia at the sound of the commotion and hexed the Beater with a spell that made sardines spill out of his nose. Duncan and Jacob both ended up in detention and missed the rest of the event, but Olivia was able to pinch a bundle of blue-fire-enchanted streamers from the dance, which the three split and used to decorate their four-poster beds.

After the loss of Olivia, who had often played peace-keeper whenever Duncan and Jacob got into arguments, the two boys found themselves more at odds. What had been fun and exciting had suddenly become very dangerous, and they both knew it. Duncan was willing to push through because of his ambition to be a Cursebreaker, while Jacob found himself only pushing through out of a desire to make up for what had happened to Olivia and to keep R from hurting his mother and sister. A lot of what went down with R and Duncan’s death is still unclear in the game, but the last present Duncan gave Jacob before his death was a set of scarlet dress robes, handsomer and better in quality than anything Jacob had ever owned before. Not long after that, Jacob was expelled from Hogwarts and he found out second-hand that Duncan had died. The two events back-to-back shattered Jacob’s entire world -- now not only did he have no future and no chance of escaping R’s web, but he was now completely alone...and he only had himself to blame. It’s very likely that -- were it not for the memory of his younger sister, Carewyn -- Jacob would’ve ended his life that night. When Rakepick persuaded Jacob to help her with the Portrait Vault, with the thought that he could finally make things right, Jacob wore Duncan’s robes on his mission -- and since he’s been released from the Vault, he’s worn them ever since, with the thought that he wants to be wearing them when he destroys R once and for all.

Duncan and Jacob’s relationship, for me, has ripples of the Steve/Bucky relationship from the MCU if their romance wasn’t totally teased and then never followed through on >>. They each are sort of “out of their own time,” as Duncan died at age 17 and Jacob is still 18 after having been locked in a portrait for seven years. They each were condemned to a fate that was their own worst fear -- Duncan’s fear of being insignificant made him not cross over to the next life, since he would’ve died having accomplished nothing of value, while Jacob’s fear of being trapped and unable to move is brought to terrifying life by his traumatic experience in the Portrait Vault. They each cared so much for each other, but either out of pride or ignorance was unable to act on those feelings before it was too late. This makes it so that Duncan and Jacob, in a strange way, are also each the only one who can truly understand what the other has gone through and is currently going through. For all of Duncan’s resentment, thinking that Jacob didn’t care about his death, he knows somewhere deep inside of him that that resentment comes from his own insecurities about how little he thinks his life meant and how much time he and Jacob wasted. Duncan hates how much his memories of Jacob still hurt him, and it’s only really after meeting and befriending Carewyn that he’s slowly starting to come to grips with how much he’s projected onto Jacob in a vain attempt to absolve himself of his own guilt. And on Jacob’s side, the loss of Duncan has made Jacob more afraid than ever before of losing his mother and especially Carewyn.

But yeah, as if you couldn’t tell, I ship these two to the moon and back. They may not live happily-ever-after, but I’d like to imagine some time, way, way, WAY in the future, their reunion in the after-life would be a very happy event for both of them.

Ship Ask!

#ooc #duncan ashe #jacob cromwell #jacob #hphm #hogwarts mystery #opinion #analysis #ship ask #that art at the top was like...the first time I ever drew duncan and only the second time I'd ever drawn jacob #it's weird seeing how much my art's changed over the span of a few months!

[scapegrace74-blog]

Do You Want To?

A/N The second prompt-inspired Metric Universe fic, this time in response to a request for Jealous Jamie/Claire by @stellarpuffin. Often we see Jamie being the jealous one, but this idea came to me fully formed. Set way back at the beginning of the Metric timeline, sometime between Breathing Underwater and Lost Kitten. Claire POV, and also just a hint of Jamie/John. Inspired by the Franz Ferdinand song and video referenced in the title, which is gloriously sexually ambiguous and can be seen here.

The entire Metric Universe is available on my AO3 page.

November 14, 2015

Village Underground, Shoreditch, London, England

"Are ye gonna bid on something?" Geillis asked as they made their way through a Tube car converted into an art installation space.

The friends stopped in front of a nine foot pastiche of rubber hoses, protrusions of oil paint and copper plating that seemed to be the artist's interpretation of what it might look like if a factory puked.

"I made my donation when I paid for my ticket," Claire replied. "Intriguing as these pieces are, if I don't mind every penny I'll end up homeless myself."

"Like I'd ever let that happen tae ye," her friend scoffed. "Let's head back tae the main buildin' then and make certain ye get yer money's worth in free food, at least."

Crisis UK's semi-annual fundraiser was a charity auction. Despite her jest, Claire was a regular contributor, having seen the physical and social toll of homelessness first-hand through her work at the hospital. The venue was a converted coal storage warehouse, renovated to the height of Functional Industrial Disrepair, and it echoed with the voices of patrons from all walks of life. Signature cocktails in hand, the two women stood to one side of the room and gossiped between morsels of finger food lifted from passing servers.

"Weeeel, if it isn't the wee fox cub," Geillis remarked with evil glee.

Muddled by several drinks downed in quick succession, Claire looked about for a stray forest animal. What she saw was nearly as unexpected. Standing out amongst the crowd of black dresses and expensive distressed jeans, Jamie Fraser's defiantly chaotic curls and trim navy blue uniform drew her eyes like a magnet. He was leaning down, listening in apparent rapt attention to a petite blonde woman with eyes take took up half her face and a crop top that started its life as a handkerchief.

"Thas' Leery Mackenzie," Geillis noted. "A more persistent flirt ye ne'er did meet, an' thas' comin' from me. Puir lad is in need of rescue."

In truth she barely knew the young fireman, besides having once been the only obstacle standing between his mangled body and the afterlife, but she found herself vaguely disappointed in his choice of company. But who was she to judge? Even heroes were entitled to an easy piece of tail now and then. After all, hadn't he dated Geillis once?

"Don't let me stop you, Duncan. I'll just stand here and hold up this derelict wall."

"Och, nah. Been there, done that. I think ye're the right woman fer the job, Beauchamp."

"Me?" she began to protest, but just then the background music ceased and a well-dressed man called for everyone to take their seats so that the auction could begin.

In addition to the art on display, a number of companies had donated services and experiences to be bid upon. Claire found herself wishing she could afford to indulge in the spa getaway package or a weekend for two in Margate. But then again, who would she take? Instead, she sipped on her drink and observed the crowd as item after item went on the block. Jamie was nowhere to be seen, but his blond friend sat in the front row, her bare shoulders glimmering under the bright lights. Who wore glitter to a charity auction, even in Shoreditch, she wondered uncharitably.

"Our next item on offer is sure to bring a smile to some lucky lady's face," the announcer intoned. "Lot 23 is an all-expenses paid night on the town with one of London Fire Brigade's bright young stars, Mister April himself, James Fraser. And here he is now. I'll start the bidding at fifty pounds."

Claire didn't know where to look first. Next to her, Geillis let out an abbreviated cry, sounding like a strangled goat. On the stage, Jamie had sauntered into the limelight, copperplate curls alight and tall, broad form neatly sheathed in navy blue. And in the front row, a glitter-strewn arm shot skyward before the auctioneer even named his starting price.

"Excellent, I have fifty pounds from the enthusiastic young lady in the front row. Do I hear sixty pounds?"

Hands were raised from elsewhere in the audience, but each time Leery answered with a higher bid.   Soon it was only the blonde tart and a slim dark-haired man with astonishingly long eyelashes who were bidding against each other.  

Claire watched to see if Jamie appeared uneasy with the idea of going on a date with another man, but he smiled easily any time the rivals outbid each other.  He wasn’t a vain man, in her estimation, but he wore his striking looks with an easy confidence that was undeniably sexy.  If you were into that sort of thing, that is.

“I have one hundred and sixty pounds from the young lady in front.  Do I hear one hundred and seventy pounds?”

The dark haired man shook his head, looking sincerely disappointed.  Claire felt a pang of sympathetic compassion.

“...once. Going twice. Final call.  I have one hundred and seventy pounds from a new bidder in the back!”

Every head swiveled around to where Claire sat, her arm raised on high.  Leery narrowed her eyes as though Claire had just cursed her lineage.  From the stage, Jamie made eye contact, instantly recognizing her. Perhaps she was deluding herself, but she felt he looked relieved.

“What happened tae livin’ on the streets?” Geillis snickered as the auctioneer recommenced the bidding.

“I’m banking on the fact that you took me in as a stray once before,” Claire retorted as she lifted her hand a second time.

When all was said and done, she ended up paying two hundred and ten pounds to go out on a date with a man she barely knew.  For reasons she couldn’t fathom, saving Jamie from Leery’s avid clutches was more important than her own ambivalence and enforced frugality.

“Ye never cease tae amaze me, Claire,” Geillis laughed after the auction concluded.  “Never in a million years would I have predicted ye had a crush on yon fox cub.”

“That’s because I don’t have a crush on him,” she denied.  “I just find the whole idea of a man, or a woman, mind you, selling himself like a piece of meat incredibly distasteful.”

“Oh, aye,” her friend grinned.  “Tis a noble deed ye’ve done, tae be sure.  An’ now that ye’ve saved him from the butcher’s block, whatever are ye tae do wit’ him?”

“I haven’t the faintest...”

“Good evenin’ tae ye, Nurse Beauchamp.  Geillis.”

The piece of meat in question stood before them, even more impressive at close range.  Just over his left shoulder she could see Leery looking on in disgust, a moue of despair painted on her ample lips.

After a few casual pleasantries, Jamie said, “Sae, Ms. Beauchamp, shall I give ye my number so we can arrange a time fer our wee outing?  I was thinking dinner an’ a show, but if ye prefer live music we could...”

“There won’t be any need to exchange numbers, Mr. Fraser.  Save your money, or better yet, donate it to the fundraiser.”

The look Leery gave her as she and a hysterical Geillis left to grab their coats was worth every penny.

#my writing #outlander

[kaypeace21]

Will created the Mindflayer (Theory revisited)

After, watching all 3 seasons I believe the upside down/mindflayer is not only an allegory for Will and El’s (cannon) ptsd/ and trauma but also (because of their powers), has become a physical manifestation (with a life of it’s own). I previously talked about how El made the upside down/demorgorgans and how Will created the mindflayer and demodogs (before s3). However I wanted to add more details to this analysis and  focus on how the Mindflayer represented Will’s darker emotions and thoughts in s3 . So let’s get started.

The original title for Stranger things was “Montauk”- in reference to the Montauk Project. It was about experiments conducted on psychic children, where the scientists would “break” them psychologically to strengthen their powers and to program them.  In one of the stories there was a boy named Duncan who could “open portals to other dimensions and periods of time” . However, one day “Duncan let loose a monster from his subconscious.” 

This is where Stranger Things comes in... El, opened the portal and created the demorgorgans, which represented El’s fears. Joyce and Nancy called the demorgorgan  a “man without a face”, or as El called them repeatedly “the bad men.” The bad men kill (using guns),  while the demorgans are attracted to blood. However, the one time they went after someone who wasn’t bleeding- was when it chased after Will, another psychic child. Brenner even says about the demorgorgan “it’s calling to you for a reason”. And right before El goes to the sensory deprivation tank, Brenner gives her flowers (resembling the opened face of the demorgorgan which resembles a flower). In the Stranger things novel, Suspicious Minds, a psychic character named Alice, even says “ “Monsters...of course my brain has them.” As long as they stayed in there, everything would be all right. “Wouldn’t it?”

The upside down/ opening of the gate/demorgorgan is even described as something that  grows and spreads, “like a cancer”. And something that will eventually kill her, if not confronted (and analogy to suicidal thoughts?)

In s1 Dusting even asks, Eleven “Do you have cancer?” In a literal sense no, but the buzzcut ( which makes people assume she has cancer) represents the abuse she’s been through. And if she doesn’t confront her trauma it will slowly eat away at her until it kills her .  Or the physical manifestation of it will.

The name El is the name of a Canaanite God, which means “god of creation.” When El said in s1 “I’m the monster”, only for Mike to correct her and disagree. In a way they’re both right, it’s not her who is in control. But the monsters (who has a life of its own) represents her darker emotions and fears and is affected by her feelings- and this is why they were mirrored to each other visually.

So the fact that the Mindflayer shows up for the first time when Will is experiencing his “anniversary effect” relating to his ptsd, may not be a coincidence. Don’t you find it strange when Will’s dog died between s1-2, the demorgorgans become demo-dogs?  And once again,  the vines ( put inside Will in s1) and the shadow monster/Mindflayer - are also described as spreading, and we are told that it will kill Will. Will even says “ the more he spreads the more connected to him I feel.” And if I’m right about Will becoming number 12, it’s interesting to point out that 12 is a numeral symbol for “God of creation”, as well.

The other Drs/scientists are extremely callous and say they need to continue the burn (even if it kills Will). However, Dr Owens even says after this “You’re putting a bandaid on this.”  Meaning they aren’t addressing the real problem- Will & El’s trauma.

And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if I’m right- this also implies Will was m***sted as a kid (probably by Lonnie), who always called him homophobic slurs. The demorogorgan represented ‘Brenner/ the bad-men’ to El. And the Mindflayer initially represented Lonnie, to Will . Will is even the first to call the Mindflayer a “he”, instead of an it- even though in d&d cannon Mindflayers are “sexless hermaphodites”. 

Also,Will doesn’t initially call the Mindflayer a “he” but an “it”.And if you only take out certain pieces of dialogue between Joyce and Will, when they first talk  about the mind flayer, where they only refer to it as an ‘it’ … and if you put  [‘he/him’] pronouns there instead… then the rest of the discussion about the mind flayer literally sounds… questionable.

Will: “It all just went blank and then you were there”

Joyce: “Will I need you to tell me the truth.”

Will: “I am!”

Joyce: “But …  But I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on. So you have to talk to me. Please. No more secrets, okay? Okay.”

Will: “ [*It] came for me and … and  I tried… I tried to make [*it] go away … but [*it] got me mom”.        (*he, * him,* he)

Joyce: What does that mean?”

Will: “I felt [*it] everywhere. everywhere. I- I still feel [*it]. I just want this to be over!”         (*him, *him)

Joyce: “LOOK AT ME! I Will never let anything bad happen to you ever again!”

And I’m not sure how seriously I should take the cannon spotify playlists. But, the cannon spotify character playlists  (which netflix and spotify worked on and published together after s2) alluded to this on both Jonathan and Will’s playlists. And the only songs about their dads hint at this fact.

Jonathan’s Playlist- We’re happy family: “Eating refried beans (poverty). Gulpin’ down Thorazines (pills for a mood disorder). We ain’t got no friends (s2 ref). Our troubles never end. Daddy likes men. Daddy’s telling lies.”

Enter sandman: “Don’t forget my son. Sleep with one eye open. Gripping your pillow tight, Exit light, Enter night. Take my hand, we’re off to never-never land. Something’s wrong, shut the light, heavy thoughts tonight. Dreams of liars and of things that will bite, yeah. Hush little baby don’t say a word, and never mind that noise you heard. It’s just the beasts under your bed, in your closet in your head.”

Will’s playlist- Creature comfort: “Some boys hate themselves spend their lives resenting their fathers…Some boys get too much, too much love, too much touch... look in the mirror and wait for the feedback”

And if the vines and the shadow monster represent his dad  the fact it enters violently through his mouth,  and the way he describes the Mf first possessing him further reinforces this analogy. Especially since Billy/MF lays on top of his victims, and  right before the monster puts a similar thing in their mouths says (To Heather) “Don’t be afraid. It’ll all be over soon. Just stay very still”, and (to El) “Don’t be afraid . It’ll all be over soon. Just try and stay... very still.” (May indicate Will might have have heard his dad say this  to him, and thats why the Mf says it to his victims.)

The entry of the vine, even causes him to spit out a slug, as he looks back in the mirror (like in the song lyric).

The experience of the vine/slug probably brought back traumatic memories, not to mention his time in the upside down invented new ones. The mindflayer first appears during Will’s ptsd “anniversary effect”. And in s2 when Joyce asked about the mindflayer drawing, Will  lies saying it’s for a story he’s writing . But maybe, unbeknownst to him... it wasn’t actually a lie ? The 1st time Will senses the Mf again in s3, is when he’s watching a movie about zombies (on a ‘date’ with Mike). And in s3, the monster the Mf creates is based “the thing” ( by  merging zombies bodies together)... and we see Will writing the d&d story right next to this ‘The Thing’ poster. The light at it’s head, indicating this whole story may be Will’s idea all along. 

So ‘the thing’, the zombies, defeating it with fire were all referenced to Will- and later showed to unfold in the Mf’s story. And even though d&d always foreshadows later events in the season,  I find it interesting that the one time in the series we see Will write the d&d story... is when it matches MF’s plans. The shadow monster stayed in the real world, after the gate closed (and didn’t do anything for 6 months)? And specifically choses to attack/possess a guy named William who also was abused by his dad and called homophobic slurs (internalized hate perhaps)? And don’t you find it strange that the shadow monster only decides to come out now, in the summer (despite it not liking hot temperatures) when Will is at his lowest point emotionally? Well, it’s because the MF is based on Will’s darker emotions and thoughts.

 S3 was the season that Will was feeling jealous over mileven, and probably coming more to terms with his sexuality -  and this is when the mindflayer/shadow monster decides to strike. Whenever the Mf is close and Will touches his neck relates to his romantic feelings for Mike. 1st time it’s on one of their ‘movie dates’, 2nd time when Mike and El walk off together down the hill, 3rd time right after he smashed castle byers after Mike says “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls”, 4th time when Mike asks him to go away so he can talk to El in the hospital waiting area, and 5th time when Mike says El loves El. 

And again it’s when Will smashes castle Byers that Will first says “He’s back”. Castle byers was built on a rainy night , the same day Will’s  dad left, when Will was 5 (the same age he met Mike). And lonnie called him a “queer” and a “f*g” and forced him to do “normal things” like baseball to have him “be more of a man”. And then on a rainy night, after Mike says “It’s not my fault you don’t like girls”… what does Will destroy castle byers with? A bat. 

Will drew up castle byers before creating it in the real world.  And the fact Will has a baseball bat (despite not liking baseball) in Castle Byers, surrounded by things he loves: drawings, d&d, art supplies, a microscope, comics- just shows what an impact Lonnie’s problematic conditioning and abandonment had on him. He used a baseball bat to destroy something he loves -castle Byers, and symbolically he was trying to reject his feelings for Mike using Lonnie’s old tactics of fixing him. So regardless of what Lonnie did or didn’t do, the correlation between the MF and Lonnie is there. He smashes up castle Byers with a bat (thinking of Lonnie) and then he feels “more connected to him (the Mf)” again, and says ‘he (the Mf) is back’.

The reason we didn’t get Willel, was for a narrative reason. We are shown that Max and El don’t know each other. It’s implied that El almost never leaves the house and just spends her time kissing Mike. So Will never got to have the opportunity to get to know her either. And for Will his resentment of El isn’t simply based on the fact he loves Mike. He insults El calling her a “stupid-girl” just like how Robin said she hated Steve and his “stupid-hair” because the girl she liked , liked him- and of course a lot of that redirected hate isn’t mere jealousy, but projected internalized homophobia. I don’t think a straight person could ever really understand how much hate queer people initially have for themselves when initially figuring things out- so his redirected anger is more than simple jealousy, but just hate for himself. He even looks at a picture of Mike after this and says “so stupid”,  4 times , while at castle Byers.

But honestly, that’s nothing compared to the hate he has/ how he blames her for ruining his life! El might have saved him twice (and it might of been an accident/ dr Brenner who’s really to blame). But Will knows she opened the gate . So to him, he spent a week in a place with no sunlight, food, or breathable air , having to experience that vine, dying, getting ptsd, being ostracized by everyone at school and being called “zombie boy” and a “freak”- being possessed by the MF, getting burned alive, killing Bob (the closest thing to a real father figure) and all those men (making him a murderer), and strangling his mom.Because of her!

And then that’s when s3 starts to make a lot more sense. Will might not want anything bad to actually happen to El but he’s probably had these dark thoughts before.  Will even says about the MF.

He says the real Mf is still in the upside down, but ‘the part that was still in him... was still in their world.’ And it flashes to El’s face as he says it. Essentially the Mf is motivated by his fictionalized story, thoughts/memories of Lonnie, and any dark intrusive thought Will has ever had about El , much to Will’s horror. 

He said in s3 that “I’m not worried about me, mom. I’m worried about you.” So the fact that he strangled her and almost killed her in s2, probably haunts him to this day- and he might of thought, ‘wish I strangled her instead’. And who does Billy/Mf look at right before grabbing her throat, and who is the first reaction shot we see when he starts choking her - Will’s horrified expression!

Maybe the Mf thought El was the most important, and that Will was nothing ( despite all the foreshadowing indicating the Mf held special intentions for Will), because he feels like he’s nothing compared to El? Will even says in s2 it wanted to kill everyone, but him, but now it’s saying that to El only? Maybe because Will wanted her to experience having such an entity say it to her too, and experience the same fear and isolation it caused him? In s2, why did the Mf chase Will and possess him at the school, when El (at the same time) was at the school as well (if it was always after her)? It’s because the Mf’s motivations are linked to Will’s feelings/emotions.

He probably also thought, how would you like a slug crawling/invading your body, huh?And although it doesn’t go to her mouth (probably because he could never wish that on anyone- if it symbolizes what I think it does). She still has a similar experience. And everyone is worried/horrified but Will is the only one sobbing (probably because he thought of this happening to her before).

After this he doesn’t even help move the car, he just stays glued at El’s side as if trying to protect her. And interestingly, this is when El loses her powers. Will may have even thought. If she never had her powers, none of this would have ever happened! Or ‘you guys wouldn’t think she’s so great without her powers.” So did Will accidentally steal her powers?!!!! Maybe. Will has always been associated with bears (along with 3 other animal symbols that El also has).  We see a zoom in shot of Will’s bear drawing right before the demorgorgan takes him from the upside down version of castle byers in s1. Bears symbolically represent  “wisdom” like ‘Will the wise’ and were associated with the demorgorgan/upside down in s1 and 2 as well . Max and Nancy both compared demorrgorgans to bears- and Nancy and Jonathan used a bear-trap to capture the demorgorgan in s1. So when El tries to grab Will’s teddy bear (it was shown to be his in s1) with her powers. And Mike says “they’ll come back”. They might actually come back, because Will and EL’s relationship improves. Mike even tried to give El a golden bear as a gift (so maybe that signifies the giving back of her powers in s4 ?)

Will was always hinted to have powers from the very beginning, so it would be incredibly stupid to just drop this plot point, despite all the foreshadowing. In the 1st episode, Will wins Dustin’s xmen comic in a bet- and Dustin later asks the gang “Do you think Eleven was born with powers like the xmen?” And also before he was sent to the upside down his password for Castle Byers was ‘Rhadagast’ a wizard character from Lord of the Rings. And in the ST prequel novel “Suspicious Minds”  the adult psychics were referenced to both the xmen and lord of the Rings characters. And in the comic, he keeps on saying ‘what would Will- the Wise do’ (his d&d wizard character). Also Dustin straight up called El a “wizard” in the last ep of s1, at Will’s bedside. Not to mention Mike in s2 called Will a “cleric” - and clerics get their powers from a god (cough the mindflayer), and in d&d the wiser the cleric the more powerful they are. And Will’s nickname is ‘Will the wise’? The fact that Will in s1 drew his character with lightning and fire powers- and the fact he barbecued 2 phones in s1 (just like El did to the radio at the school). In s1 was said he could “shadow walk” a wizard d&d power.  The fact he could control lights and manipulate electronics to communicate to his mom from another dimension (and in s1 only El could do that). The fact he literally created a portal through the wall of his house (just like El did at the school in s2). And just the many other hints in s1! The fact that he drew himself in s2 with a crystal ball (which is associated with the powers of scrying and clairvoyance) before being possessed, but just so happen to have those abilities in s2. Dustin also said the only way to defeat the MF is an undead army and Will’s nickname is “zombie boy”. So frankly, his fight with the MF (who is still in the upside down) may not be over. And that new demorgagan in Russia might be a symbol of El’s grief over Hopper’s (perceived) death.

This would honestly, be the only explanation that would allow me to forgive the Duffers . Like you can steal this idea from me! Please! XD

#stranger things theory #will byers #byler #el hopper

[torestoreamends]

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Recap: Cast Four – 22/23 & 26 May (Part One)

On Wednesday and Thursday I saw Cast Four for the first time. I came out of those performances unsure how I felt about the cast and the changes to the show. There was a lot that I didn’t like, and I didn’t feel excited about the year ahead at all. Looking back now, I was exhausted when I was watching those shows. I didn’t take much in, and when I was trying to write my recap I knew I was missing a lot. I felt neither passionate about nor proud of what I was writing. 

So on Sunday I got another ticket and tried again. I ended up sitting further back than I have in a year and a half, but also in the second most central seat I’ve had in a year. And it helped. 

I’ve always found that sitting close to the stage you focus on the action close to the front a lot more. It’s difficult to get the depth of what’s going on. When you sit slightly further back it’s far easier to take in the choreography, and what I was unhappy with on Wednesday and Thursday was largely the choreographic changes. 

My Sunday seat gave me a view like I was looking at a model box of the show — it was the sort of view the show was designed to be seen from. All the shapes came out, the lighting, the details of the movement, plus it was an absolute gift of a show. I fell in love with portrayals and changes I hadn’t been certain of, and fell even more deeply in love with the things I’d already enjoyed. 

So, without further ado, here are some thoughts about the new portrayals we’ve got (including our first cover of the year — the wonderful Gordon Millar as Karl etc.), followed by a recap of Sunday’s show, combined with thoughts from Wednesday and Thursday. 

Because this got exceptionally long (my second longest recap ever), I’ve split it in half. Part One is below, and Part Two can be found here.

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David Mara — Station Master

If I had to pick anyone to step into Martin’s shoes, it would have been David. He was great in every role I saw him cover last year, and he was great in this role too. I like the strange whistle he does at the start of the scene — it reminds me of someone else who used to do proper signalling style whistles — and it’s fun to watch him looking with confusion at the boys as they chat in their corner (although I am concerned by how much he must overhear). I can’t wait to see this scene develop over the year.

Lucy Mangan — Myrtle

I think Lucy’s going to be a really excellent Myrtle (and I can’t wait to see her cover Delphi too). There were some great over the top little touches to her portrayal. When she did ‘the weeping after he was taken’, she cried once then stopped, cried again then stopped, then one of the boys started trying to talk so she held a hand up to stop him while she cried a third time. It’s ridiculous little details like that, which make me most excited to see her again. 

Blythe Duff — Professor McGonagall

They honestly couldn’t have found a better person to take over from Sandy. Blythe is the first McGonagall not to have the Maggie Smith look, but that actually made me love her more. It was her warmth and charm and sparkle that made her feel like McGonagall, and I would probably fight to the death for her already.

Her Trolley Witch was also gorgeous. I’ve seen many Trolley Witch debuts over the years, and even ones I ultimately come to love have felt disappointing first time round, but not this one. She captured the right feeling of ancient, authoritative power so perfectly. I cannot wait to see her again.

Gordon Millar as Karl

Our first cover of the year, and what a good one. On Wednesday and Thursday he went straight onto my ‘must watch’ list, so a big part of me deciding to go for a ticket on Sunday was the desire to see him. 

His Karl is actually quite sweet (which I think stems from Gordon being a lovely, funny human being), but in the St Oswald’s scene Gordon’s character is an absolute — to put it bluntly — dick. He’s a bully, a nasty piece of work, and it really helps the scene (more on that later). I also loved Gordon’s Krum a lot. This one has great movement (like seemingly everyone in the cast), and I cannot wait to see more of him.

Luke Sumner and Emma-May Uden as Yann and Polly

I feel bad lumping these two together but in the show they really did come as a pair. They were perfect fake, popular, nasty individuals. I’ve never hated Yann and Polly more, and I mean that in the best possible way. They were just the sort of people who would bully Albus and Scorpius, and I loved it.

Ronnie Lee as Craig

My heart belongs to Ronnie. There was just something so likeable about him. Sometimes Craig feels like a little ray of sunshine, and that’s just how it should be. Also, I appreciate the boldness of someone who’ll full on lie on the death table, with both feet in the air, so it looks like they’ve been blasted off their feet and are falling to the ground in slow motion. That was an excellent death.

Another thing I noticed about Ronnie was his dance talent. There was a Mackley-esque fierceness to his Death Eater dance, and he was just generally brilliant at the movement. This whole cast is so noticeably strong on the movement — possibly the strongest so far.

Also, while I’m talking about Ronnie I have to mention the other two members of the most adorable trio of Slytherin boys ever — there’s Gordon, as mentioned above, and Duncan Shelton. They had some chants going on in the first task, some excitable stampy feet, and just lots of general sweetness. I can’t wait to get to know these three better. They’re going to be brilliant.

Kathryn Meisle as Umbridge

One of our very first Hogwarts foreign exchange students. I thought she did a really good job, and I particularly thought her Petunia was good. Also, she did a little skip when she was going off after telling Scorpius he was ruining Voldemort, which was just the perfect touch of sweet, girlish, disgusting Umbridge.

Madeleine Walker as Delphi

I had two first impressions of Madeleine as Delphi. First, I don’t know how many of you have seen Puffs, but in terms of attitude and eyeliner she looked just like Megan — like she’s trying to be edgy but is actually just a nerd. My other first impression, related to that, was that Delphi was exactly the sort of person that Albus and Scorpius would want to be friends with. 

She’s awkward and nerdy and has the same vibe as they do. It’s easy to see how well she’s playing them, especially in Part One. But at the same time, once she’s revealed her true self she doesn’t change much, and there’s something very creepy about that. This person who seems so harmless and nice has all this evil lurking literally right under the surface, and she holds very little of herself back. 

It should also be said that at some point this year, Madeleine is going to deliver the wildest Torture Scene we’ve ever had. Even on Sunday she absolutely blew me away, and it’s only going to get better. I’m so excited. 

Michelle Gayle as Hermione

I liked Michelle‘s Hermione. She had a bit of the know-it-all vibe, and her Hermione felt quite young. There was this obvious relation to book Hermione that worked well. I particularly liked her scene in Harry’s office right at the start of the play. She felt like Harry’s friend from the books. I also think that she’s got a lot of great thoughts about the character, and I can’t wait to see her engage with them throughout her performance and develop them over the year.

She made a great attempt to play Delphi Polyjuiced, which I really appreciated. That was a big highlight from her. It’s surprising how rare it is to see the adults actually try to replicate what the kids are doing (aside from Jamie B, who’s a master of the art).

Rayxia Ojo as Rose

Rayxia’s back, and it’s wonderful. Her Rose has always seemed so grown up and mature, and next to Dominic’s Albus she feels particularly so, just because she looks so tall beside him. It’s weird because in all the ensemble scenes she’s one of the shortest people around. Anyway, it’s great to have her back in the show, she works wonderfully with Michelle (there’s a similarity of character there that’s really nice), and I can’t wait to see more from her.

Ryan Mackay as James

I’ve seen Ryan as James a few times before, and always enjoyed him, but he seems to have come into his own with this cast. He particularly owned the Lily and James death scene, and it was uncanny how much he and Dom looked like brothers when they were standing near each in the opening scene. I also adored his Cedric, particularly on Sunday, and he has a very fine background moment in St Oswald’s that I truly think helps make the scene palatable. I’m so pleased he gets an expanded role with this cast and seems to be flourishing with it. 

Dominic Short as Albus

Sometimes when I watch someone play a character in this show for the first time I feel an instant comfort in their portrayal, and that was how I felt with Dom. It was a mixed blessing because I felt so comfortable and confident in him that I didn’t pay him as much attention as I should have done (there was lot to take in), but I really loved him. Thankfully, on Sunday I get to pay a lot closer attention to him, and he absolutely blew me away. Even from near the back of the stalls his expressiveness drew me in. 

His Albus has a certain happiness to him. He’s less broken than the last couple have been. There’s genuine jubilation in his portrayal at certain moments, like when he casts some of the spells successfully and when they figure out how to get a message to Harry.

There are many moments when he reminded me vividly of Sam’s Albus (which will never be a problem), and I loved the flashes of anger and emotion. On first viewing I felt that he was quite a young Albus, especially after Joe whose Albus was quite mature and surprisingly thoughtful. However, on second viewing he felt a lot more self-aware, and there was some real tenderness there. Some absolutely beautiful moments.

One of my favourite things about him was that in Part One he feels wrapped up in his own problems, and you can clearly see the spiral from an enthusiastic boy looking forward to going to Hogwarts to an angry, miserable, withdrawn young man by fourth year. The transition scene was perfectly played in that regard.

I really was very impressed by him. I think he’s the Albus they’ve been trying to cast since the show opened. He has Sam’s fierce anger and prickliness, with Theo’s emotion, Joe’s humour, and an ability to adapt and change to what’s going on around him. We’re only at the start and already he’s sparking my imagination and making me desperate to see more. This is going to be the most excellent year.

*

So, with those first impressions out of the way, let’s get into some changes and great character moments.

Opening and transition scene (Act One, Scenes One to Four)

The weird thing about a first show, especially one in which the person playing the Sorting Hat is staying the same, is that for the first few seconds nothing feels different. It could be any other show. But then the first member of the ensemble walks out and you realise that everything has changed.

There’s a new bit of choreography in the first scene that I was pre-warned of but of course completely forgot about until it happened, so it took me by surprise. The Sorting Hat (who now wears glasses as part of his costume – fun facts) stands in the middle of the stage and manipulates the people around him. There’s a whole group that he diverts with a flash of light, a man he turns round with a gesture, and he makes the woman at the front of the stage walk round her suitcase.

As someone who loves the Sorting Hat, his role in the play, and what it means, the whole interaction felt a bit random. It’s obviously a flashy opening to the show, with a bit of magic, but I’ve never seen the Sorting Hat as a manipulator. I’ve realised recently that he’s a protector and guardian of the boys (particularly of Scorpius) in the same way that Hagrid is a protector of Harry, and he’s also the bringer of magic to the show, but this doesn’t seem to add anything to that. If anything, there needed to be more of the manipulation – there were only three interactions, so it didn’t actually make that much of an impact on someone seeing it of the first time. To me it ought to be go big or go home.

On the second viewing I realised that technically bringing Harry onto Platform 9 3/4 could count as one of the manipulations (it’s got the same sound effect associated with it), and I also realised that he never seems to touch a group that has Delphi in. So maybe there is some meaning in there if you dig a bit.

The first big line change is Lily’s line in the opening scene, which is no longer ‘Are they here? Maybe they didn’t come’. It’s not her wondering whether the Granger-Weasleys are late, and lamenting that they’re always late. Thankfully this isn’t a line from the epilogue, so the change doesn’t really have that much impact. It’s another of the random changes that we now see throughout the show – ones that don’t really make much of a difference, and it’s unclear why they were made.

In this opening scene, seeing Dom and Ryan side by side showed how perfect their casting as brothers is. They look so similar, particularly in face shape. 

Watching this cast for a second time from a distance let me appreciate a really cool James moment properly for the first time. When Albus is being sorted, James and Scorpius are on complete opposite sides of the stage, perfectly symmetrical, and they’re the only two people in the crowd picked out by a spotlight, which illuminates both their faces. It’s like Albus’s Sorting is visibly tearing him between his family and his new best friend, and it lets you see both their reactions perfectly — James’s bewilderment and Scorpius’s disbelieving excitement. 

Going back to the opening scene, we got to see the first glimpse of Dom’s Albus before anything happens to him. There’s a youthful joy there. He laughs at Ron’s jokes and seems to be relaxed around his family. He’s genuinely excited to be going to Hogwarts. Until he gets there…

There are directions throughout the transition scene that with each passing year, Albus gets more withdrawn and miserable, and that’s just how Dom played it. You could see the process of Albus becoming increasingly demoralised with life at Hogwarts, and it was wonderful. Right from the start, Dom had such ownership over Albus, putting his stamp on the role, and even just the first scene made me excited to see him in Part Two – it was an excellent start.

In the first show everything was technically perfect, but in the show on Sunday, the fire didn’t work on the Incendio trick. However, Dom’s cover for it was perfect, and added something to the character. He just sighed very heavily and sort of threw his hands in the hair as he said he didn’t expect it to work anyway. I never realised before how that line is so open to all possibilities.

The next few obvious changes came in the transition scene: Scorpius now offers Rose a rose in London (is it a trick rose? It looked like it had a collapsible stem to me), also, when the boys’ potion explodes, the kids around Albus and Scorpius flop forwards instead of bending backwards. And then, of course, you get the wand dance.

Dominic was so bold in the wand dance, which I really enjoyed. Nothing was held back and everything was extended and gone for. There was actually lots I loved about the new choreography in this scene too (I think it was one of the biggest successes of all the changed elements). There are lots of circles and lines, and my favourite moment was when all the other kids circled round Albus, leaning in and looming over him. I also liked that he got a moment to fit in and help the others – just a brief flash of success, that must be all the more painful for being so fleeting.

The new wand dance begins with a big flashy trick – the current shot of fire now connects up to a sort of flaming rope on the ceiling, so that brief spark flies all the way from the bottom to the top of the stage. It ends with the usual red smoke, and one of the other kids taunting Albus: “Even his wand wants to be in Gryffindor”.

To briefly backtrack, I need to give a quick shoutout to Dom’s “I stayed for your sweets” from Sunday. He did a little dad dance as he said it, and I can only describe it as like he was milking a cow. A little up and down motion with his hands, fists clenched. I know it sounds weird (this show has made me write some very bizarre descriptive phrases) but he made it work, even if he did look like a ridiculous nerd doing it. 

Blanket Scene (Act One, Scenes Six and Seven)

I really liked the introduction to Delphi in the scene before the Blanket Scene. Her conversation with Albus is really sweet, and she curtised to him before she went off to talk to Amos (the first of two curtsies in the show — the second was to Scorpius when he called her The Augurey). 

One of her finest moments was when she shook hands with Harry and looked at the scars on his hand. You could feel her reading ‘I must not tell lies’ and mentally calling him out for lying right in front of her. After all, he does know about the Time-Turner, she knows he does, and she also knows that he’s lying to Amos. It was such a powerful, silent moment of judgement. A gorgeous little detail.

In the Blanket Scene itself, I adored how Dom’s Albus interacted with his siblings. Because I was so far away for the Sunday show I couldn’t actually see or hear Albus laughing at James’s antics, but I could see his shoulders bouncing from the laughter. And then when Lily comes in looking for her Potions book, Albus holds his hands up to say it’s not his fault. It’s only when Harry comes into the room that he finally sits down, perched on the edge of the bed, and from that moment he never really relaxed or seemed comfortable. His space had been invaded, and he tensed up almost immediately. 

Once they got into the scene itself, we found an angry Albus, who wasn’t afraid to raise his voice and fight back. At no point did he seem even close to accepting the blanket, and there was an expression on his face that said that he hated his dad’s reasoning for giving it to him. He knew the gift was all about Harry, and he detested it right from the word go.

One of the things I noticed about Dom’s Albus was how he always shrank back, never holding his ground. He ended up occupying parts of the stage that people don’t normally go to – only by a few centimetres sometimes, but it was still noticeable. In this scene he was pushed well back beyond the bed, and again in the final scene he hid among the graves, keeping a physical distance from Harry. In this particular scene it worked really well, the shrinking away, closing himself off, as Harry got more heated. I also loved that he said the final line of the scene the original way round: ‘No luck or love for me then’. 

Dom’s is one of the angriest Blanket Scenes we’ve had for a while. He really explodes, and it’s wonderful. He fully unfolds the blanket when he describes it as mouldy, and gives it a look of disgust that Harry is so upset by. 

St Oswald’s (Act One, Scene Thirteen)

I have now seen the new St Oswald’s three times (once on Broadway, twice in London), and I still can’t say that I’m convinced by it. 

At first I hated it. With a passion. It starts off alright, with a biscuit palace appearing onstage, then quickly descends into something quite distasteful. The stage direction in the script for this scene is about magic being done for fun. It’s supposed to be joyful, people who can do magic because they love it rather than having to do it for work or study. It should be colourful and vibrant, as well as chaotic.

What we get is certainly chaotic, but as the employees of St Oswald’s play various tricks on the residents, there’s an uncomfortable feeling to the scene. There’s not a nice spirit there. Previously the scene has been hilarious and delightful. Now it’s just mean, and borders on elder abuse, which just isn’t necessary. The scene could have been remade without going anywhere near that territory, and I do think it’s a serious misstep. Not to mention the fact that some of the tricks are so juvenile and fake (one lady gets stuck inside a sofa, with a pair of legs that are so clearly not her own sticking up in the air). 

On Sunday, my third viewing of it, however, I did start to see sort of what they were going for, and there were a couple of redeeming features. When you sit close to the front it’s difficult to see the choreography going on towards the back of the stage, so sitting further back allowed me to see Ryan’s role in the scene, and I loved what he brought to it. 

His staff member has a very brief role in proceedings, but I think it’s essential. While Gordon was bullying the residents (which he did with incredible viciousness), Ryan was looking utterly horrified. There was an expression on his face that just said ‘this is so far from okay, I’m not doing this’, and that was the point when he exited the scene. 

It was really good to see someone in character acknowledging how bad what was going on was, and showed a self-awareness that I hadn’t realised was there before. There was also the fact that at the end of the scene, when the nasty staff member gets his comeuppance (he ends up holding a teacup that’s spilling over with fire), the residents of St Oswald’s all started dancing and enjoying themselves. Those two things combined really helped me with it, and I think with further viewings I might come around to accepting it. 

It is still frustrating to have to work so hard on it though. I’ve always loved this show for its artistry and joyful magic, and this scene feels like an unnecessary step away from that. What was wrong with the original, very funny, perfectly good spirited version of the scene? 

Around the map (Act One, Scene Seventeen)

The scene where the adults talk around the map, trying to work out where Albus and Scorpius might be, is always a bit of a dark horse of a scene. It doesn’t feel that important, but there’s always so much fascinating character work going on there. And so it was in this show.

I caught Harry and Ginny having a silent conversation, in which Harry told Ginny not to mention what he said to Albus. I’m pretty sure that was because he didn’t want Draco to know, and if he had to tell Hermione he’d rather tell her in person. And yet of course Ginny brings up an opportunity for him to tell everyone. It made it feel almost as if she was betraying him, which did actually work.

There’s a lot of conflict during the show between Harry and Ginny. It’s hidden because their relationship is so strong and they do spend so much time interacting. They obviously love one another. But Ginny does find Harry’s actions difficult to swallow sometimes. She calls him out on them. And that tiny interaction in this scene really laid the groundwork for that.

Ginny’s priority throughout the play is Albus. Harry is a grown man who can look after himself, and while she loves him, she knows that Albus is by far the more vulnerable party here, and she’s going to fight every step of the way to find him and help him. In this scene, getting Harry to admit what he’s done is the best way of achieving that, so she makes it happen. She doesn’t actively tell everyone what Harry’s role in Albus’s disappearance was, but she puts him in a position that enables him to tell the truth.

To know that that came from a silent conversation between the two of them was so fascinating, and it added an extra dimension to the journey they take through the rest of the show. We could not be more lucky. Jamie and Susie are such fantastic actors, and the thought they bring to their characters is game changing.

Opening of Act Two (Act Two, Scene One)

Here were a couple of changes that I loved straight away. Before in the dream sequence, young Harry has been haunted by a single, ghostly hand, and that’s still the case. Except in the new version, by the end there are three hands reaching for him.

This might be a bit random, but I really liked the fact that there were three hands, not four. The odd number threw things off and added to the creepiness of it. There was something even more unnatural about the dream. And actually what I noticed throughout the show is that in the moments that are meant to be unnatural and wrong, tiny bits of choreography have been tweaked to make that vibe feel so tangible. 

The other great thing about this new version of the dream is that Harry finally does look like he’s wet himself. It’s a detail that should have been added years ago, but I’m glad it’s here now. Also, Harry’s clothes are now genuinely too big for him. They look like adult’s clothes, just the way they should. Those little things make all the difference.

The adults visit McGonagall’s Office (Act Two, Scene Three)

There were so many reasons to love Blythe as McGonagall, but one of my favourites came in this scene. As they were leaving the office to go and find the boys, she saw Ron with the napkin tucked into his top, and reached across to take it off him with a tut. It was so brusque and no nonsense, plus it hinted at her familiarity with him and the others. Although she holds power over them (even Hermione) by virtue of being one of the most wise and respected figures in the Wizarding World, this group are also colleagues in a sense — fellow soldiers who have fought through a war together — and the respect goes both ways. Respect and fondness. Almost a familial bond. It was such a sweet little touch. 

Expelliarmus Scene (Act Two, Scene Four)

This is one of the big trick scenes that can go wrong, but I’m pleased to report that it didn’t in either show. There was an air of confidence from both Madeleine and Dom, and the trick worked really smoothly. Being able to pull that one off with such panache must take guts, especially first time out, and they did a great job. In fact they were both very good with the magic throughout.

Another excellent Delphi moment came at the end of this scene (only in the first show — sadly it wasn’t repeated on Sunday). After she kissed Albus on the cheek, Scorpius did his normal flailing routine in front of her, and she was having none of it. She rolled her eyes and, from several metres away, did a fake little ‘mwah mwah’ in the air, roughly directed to either side of his face. It was sarcastic, impatient, and designed to let him know that he needed to get out of her way fast, which he did. It was a great way of handling his ridiculousness.

Bane and the search for the boys (Act Two, Scene Five)

One of the little details I noticed during the opening of this scene, when everyone was searching the forest, was that Harry wasn’t quite alone when he started calling for Albus and Scorpius. On Wednesday I assumed this was just because the ensemble were a little bit slow getting off the stage, but it was the same on Sunday too, and I was really pleased. I liked it as a sign of Harry’s desperation. Even amongst all these other people helping him, he starts shouting for his son. No waiting for a private moment. No embarrassment. Just his guilt and his need to get his son back safely.

First Task (Act Two, Scene Seven)

If anyone was afraid that the First Task might be a little quiet without the Mackley, Josh, and James Phoon show, you needn’t be. There was plenty of chaos going on, enough to make it difficult to watch the main action.

This was the scene that made me fall in love with the trio of Slytherin boys – Ronnie, Gordon, and Duncan. They were simply wonderful, and absolutely adorable. They had a little chant that I couldn’t quite catch (I think it might have been Cedric related), and then there was some excitable chanting of Krum’s name when he was announced. Also, Ronnie kept stamping his feet to emphasise his applause, and it looked like the three of them were having a whale of a time.

On Sunday, when Gordon was in Hufflepuff, Ronnie went on a Josh-style excursion to visit him, which was very sweet. When he got back to Slytherin there was a lot of hat stealing and Krum chanting and just general chaos. 

Hospital Wing (Act Two, Scenes Eight and Nine)

Albus had a little nightmare while Harry was talking to Dumbledore. He didn’t thrash around as much as Theo used to, it was quite contained, but he was definitely bothered by something going on in his head. There’s something nice about an Albus waking up with a shout of his dad’s name. Even after everything, he still subconsciously loves and needs his dad.

Another little detail from this scene was that this Albus actually ate some of the chocolate. It’s always fun to note who does and doesn’t (Joe very much did not).

One of my favourite Dominic moments came in the scene after this one, when Albus tells Scorpius that he can’t speak to him anymore. He was sharp with Scorpius, but it seemed to be driven by his desire to at least try and do what was necessary to make peace with his dad. However, he was certainly not happy about it. After he’d told Scorpius they’d be better off without each other, he turned to his dad to say ‘okay?’ It was spiteful, spat out, as if saying ‘are you happy now?’ As much as he wants his dad’s affection, he hates the things he has to do to try and get it.

Staircase Ballet (Act Two, Scene Twelve)

This was the first scene where I really noticed the difference in height between Jonathan and Dominic. I obviously knew that Jonathan is the tallest Scorpius we’ve ever had and Dominic the shortest Albus, but there’s something about seeing it in person that makes it all so much more real.

The two boys came together at the top of the stairs (the point when they’re standing side by side, and Albus is trying to avoid Scorpius’s eyes) and there they were. Tall and tiny.

The other thing I really loved about this staircase ballet came from something I’ve noticed before. While Scorpius moves through Hogwarts with ease, from staircase to staircase without a thought, Albus hits dead ends and has to wind his way through the school. It’s like the school accepts Scorpius, but is rejecting Albus. And in both these shows, when Albus walked out from the wings to climb the staircase and meet Scorpius in the middle, he was faced with the wrong end of the staircase. Instead of having steps leading up, there was an unattainable ledge high above him. It was just another sign of the school shutting him out. Another barrier. Sometimes he must feel that he can’t possibly get anywhere – even the building is against him, let alone the classes, his magic, and his fellow students.

Library Scene (Act Two, Scene Sixteen)

I don’t remember much from this scene on Wednesday, but Sunday was vivid, so let’s talk about that. In fact, let’s just talk about Dominic. 

In every scene, but in this one particularly, his body language alone carried right to the back of the theatre. While Scorpius was yelling at Albus, most of the time he was on the verge of stepping forward. He wanted to interrupt, to defend himself, to just say something, maybe even apologise. He was constantly on tiptoes, half stepping forward, half rooted to the spot, shoulders hunched, Time-Turner cradled in his hand. 

Then Scorpius started talking about his mum, and that was when Albus finally stopped trying to interject. He stepped back, bowing his head. He seemed to shrink, and all the fight went out of him until there was just despair. 

When I first saw Dom’s Albus I thought he might be selfish, but on Sunday I realised just how self-aware he is. Especially in the library scene he was so conscious of everything he’d done and said, and what Scorpius was directing at him. It was heartbreaking to see him crumble like that. And when he got onto his apology there was such softness to it, but also power, this drive to let Scorpius know the truth. It was such a beautiful apology, and I’m so pleased that by Sunday Dom had already found Albus’s softer side, because (probably down to nerves) that was the one thing I was lacking on Wednesday and Thursday. 

The other big thing to talk about in this scene has to be the hug. I don’t even know if it can be described as a hug, because there wasn’t much of the boys holding onto each other. While Dom did attempt to do some hugging, Jonathan just draped himself over Dom’s shoulders. He was hanging off him, arms dangling down his back. Only very briefly did Scorpius actually pat Albus’s back, before they parted. It was one of the most awkward disasters of a hug I’ve ever seen. I loved it.

Act Two ending

A couple of little things to finish off Part One:

McGonagall absolutely embraced ‘I solemnly swear that I am up to no good’. She did the most epic wand swish, and was really going for it. Rebellious McGonagall might be my absolute favourite thing to come from the show.

When the boys are under the lake, they now have wild static hair. I noticed it first because I spotted how wild Dom’s hair was. Then I noticed that Scorpius’s wig was sticking up. It took me a second to twig that it was because they were meant to be underwater. At first I thought it was a nice touch, but then I realised that, because the hair doesn’t move like they’re underwater, it kind of just looks like they’ve been attacked with balloons backstage. Also, I feel really sorry for Dom who has to brush that mess out before he can go and have lunch. A little puff of wind or something to make the hair move might make the whole thing more effective. It’s difficult to tell. But for now I guess I’ll just be entertained by how wild they look.

Umbridge did a very creepy skip as she went off after telling Scorpius about Voldemort Day. It was chillingly perfect; just the right amount of gross girlishness.

The Dementor on stage left is wild. Both on Wednesday and Sunday it kept pogoing up and down like mad. I kind of love it. It’s very excitable. 

*

So that’s Part One. Click here for Part Two and a little bit of summing up >

#Harry Potter and the Cursed Child #Cursed Child #hpplayldn #Cast Four #Dominic Short #Jonathan Case #Jamie Ballard #Susie Trayling #Madeleine Walker #My writing #Notes from the show #Keep The Secrets #I really love this cast #they're great #also sorry this took so long #in my defence it's my second longest recap ever...

[dianamjackson]

Dance (2020)

“What you can’t have with a man, you’ll experience onstage, ten times as intensely! Ten times? A hundred! Sublimated… As if I were making love with God? That’s right, you can dance everything, understand almost everything through music. Go on, get dressed!” ~ Birmant & Oubrerie, 2019, Isadora. And so went the lines that made me buy this book. It’s a brilliant graphic novel by Julie Birmant and illustrated by Clément Oubrerie about Isadora Duncan, the mother of modern dance. I was led to this book. I wasn’t even going to enter the bookshop but something compelled me. In the music section, which is where I usually go, I was looking for the dance section. I finally found it (it was tiny), and the name ‘Isadora’ in red letters on the spine so compelled me that I couldn’t stop staring at it. My other favourite line is when she’s in a cafe nursing a beer, having just turned down Loie Fuller’s offer to join the latter’s dance troupe: “Whom to share this strange feeling with, of Greek temples without sky or infinity?” Indeed, whom to share my view of life with. Story of my life. I called my website a lover’s dance because I consider all my activities dancing and I’m a lover. I love a lot of things, including love itself. I’ve always been that way; a floaty-headed romantic. I only ever draw pictures when I’m in love with my subject, I only ever record music when I felt compelled, and I only ever write when I have something to say. I have never been a Puritan when it comes to my arts. This “inspiration finds you at work” thing — please. In the past fifteen years I’ve recalled exactly two instances of boredom, each lasting about five minutes. I am always inspired and so there is always something to do. (Actually, Michael said something fascinating about “writer’s block” that I never forgot. He said that merely uttering the phrase creates writer’s block, because you ‘speak things into existence.’ He is absolutely right. I’d heard of this phenomenon but, as I’m always inspired, had never experienced it myself. Furthermore, I knew that acknowledging the concept would create it. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did. In art and design classes people talked about “fear of the blank page.” I had no idea what they were on about; to me a blank page was the most exciting thing ever. I guess these are the “ordinary people” Michael laments. One downside of being perpetually inspired and creatively active is that many people can’t relate to you. But more on that later.) I’d always loved the idea of dancing but was far too self conscious to ever do it in front of anyone. I was even too embarrassed to dance alone. But my love and fascination grew until it became stronger than the fear, and I started dancing. Now, I can’t help it. Before I encountered Michael (September of 2018) I was planning on going to clubs just to dance. But the problem with clubs is that people often go there to pick up, there’s not enough room and sometimes the music is bad or too loud or the sound is poorly balanced. There are so many problems with clubs. A fascinating thing about dancers, the really good ones, is that they do everything in a dancerly way. The way you do anything is the way you do everything, said Tom Waits. For me, all movement is an opportunity for dancing — whether walking to a door, typing on a keyboard, playing guitar or just sitting in a chair. When Miles Davis was going to clubs with Clark Terry to check out the musicians, he said that they could tell whether a guy could play by the way he was standing. I’m fascinated by the act of moving. I love creating graceful movements with my body — movements that look as beautiful as pictures. Dancing is a freer, more dynamic and more exciting way for me to draw. As I say in my Gold Dance commentary video, each frame is a painting — that’s thousands of paintings in a single short film! Far more than I could ever hope to produce as paintings in my lifetime. Not that quantity is so important; it’s just that there are so many poses I’d want to paint. With dancing, I can do them all, and quickly. There’s a kind of ‘move lightly’ principle at work in me — an economy of movement and contact. Some people are really profligate in the way they move; I can accomplish the same task in far fewer movements and with less contact. Michael has this economy too, I’ve noticed. Strangely enough, our tentativeness of contact is combined with a strong sensory desire for and enjoyment of contact. The tentativeness comes from being highly sensitive: watch any highly sensitive child among non-sensitive children and they will be the last to try or approach anything. This is obvious in footage of Michael playing in the snow with his brothers, aged about 6. His brothers are furiously playing in the snow and M is way off to the side, observing and not getting involved. The sensory sensitivity is evidenced by the way we touch things: watch the way Michael touches anything. When he strokes kids’ heads, he uses his whole hand, lovingly. This is exactly how I do it too. He’s enjoying the sensation of the kid’s hair and warm head on his whole hand, and it calms them both. We do the same thing with animals. There’s a fascinating video of M aged about 19 combing a little boy’s hair at a party. I love seeing the way he combs the boy’s hair: gently but deftly and swiftly, just like his dancing. There are no girls at the party; all the other boys are showing off or cracking jokes and M is in the back holding the little boy on his hip like a mother, not really participating in the revelry, just focusing on the kid. Idiots will infer sexual indecency, but it’s not. It’s because we’re highly sensitive, sensory types, and M is a very feminine and therefore maternal person. When we’re sitting down I’ve noticed we minimise the degree to which our bodies are in contact with other things. A characteristic pose will be one leg resting horizontally on the other knee (to stretch it out), but the contact between the ankle and the knee will be minimal; the whole pose is balanced and looks elegant. It’s like we’re always posing, always seeking a balanced stance; like our entire existence is an aesthetic project (it is). Along with economy is grace — whenever we move, we’re dancing. Everything is an opportunity for dancing — whether we’re actually dancing, or just picking up a cup. It does betray a real joy in being alive, in being in a body. What a beautiful privilege to live like this, when all movement is exciting.

I touched on the “leg thing” in my piece My Guy (2020) in Dance notes (www.aloversdance.com). I first noticed M doing this in a picture sitting at a table reading a book. His left leg is completely stretched out resting on a chair, while his right is bent normally. I’d done this for years without ever thinking about it or asking why I do it. I’m doing it right now, as I write this. Upon reflection, I think it might be related to the discharge of energy. We both have a lot of tension in our bodies  — he probably has more — and stretching the body out in space is a way to dissipate this energy. Dr Christiane Northrup says that the body has a crystalline grid that discharges energy when we stretch. No wonder stretching feels so good. When I was little I was obsessed with cats (and still kinda am). I watched their movements very closely, obsessively studied pictures of them in cat books and drew them endlessly. I emulated their movements — the way they climbed, hunted, batted with their paws, licked milk from a bowl and walked on their tip toes. I scared people all the time because I’d walk up behind them without making a sound. I loved wearing socks, and still do. In my music film Moles (2020) I am dancing in sparkly socks on a table top. I loved climbing trees as a kid; M says this is one of his favourite things to do. If I were an animal, I’d be a cat. Maybe a lioness or a black panther. Michael would be a deer, I think. He really likes deers, and looks like one with his thin frame, thick neck and gigantic eyes. A cross between a deer, a cat and a praying mantis. He does have a weird reptilian thing with his pet boa constrictor and enjoyed scaring girls (and Quincy Jones!) with his pet snakes. I’ve never liked snakes; I think they’re gross. I’ve had many nightmares containing snakes. So that’s one thing we don’t have in common. So we both have a lot of bodily tension, which is largely responsible for our body rhythm, as I call it — the characteristic rhythm with which we do everything we do from singing to talking to writing to dancing. I’m fascinated by the way tension builds up. This became abundantly clear one day on the tram unable to stretch my leg out because there wasn’t enough room. It built up so much that I actually got angry. Certain activities build tension, and others dissipate it. Concentrating on a difficult problem using beta brain waves builds tension, while meditation using alpha brain waves eases it. Certain types of music create tension, other types ease it. Movement of any kind also eases tension. The Buddhists say that all movement is dukkha or suffering. But where would this suffering have originated? In the case of highly sensitive people growing up in largely non-sensitive households, their subjective experience of growing up in that household is considerably more traumatic than for the non-sensitives. For me, growing up in my house was like a daily war zone. No doubt Michael felt the same growing up in his house. All that trauma is registered by our cells, determines our gene expression and ingrains certain pathways that we carry into adulthood. We then have to live in ways that alleviate all this accrued suffering. It seems to me that we’re always in fight-or-flight mode because of that early conditioning; we’ve a constant vigilance. This is stressful for the body, so we find ways to calm ourselves through fiddling, dancing, avoiding stimulation and taking depressant drugs. I’m quite sure that Michael would not dance the way he did if it weren’t for his childhood experiences of trauma. Dancing is self-expression, and a person dances the way they do because of who they are and the experiences they’ve had. And, much of it depends on the music, I find. (As for dancing without music, as M did in BoW, I’m not sure what to make of that as yet.) I think of high sensitivity as having a ‘more porous’ body than non-sensitive people, so things ‘infect’ the sensitive person more strongly. Intense, hard music makes us dance hard and intense; soft, beautiful music creates soft and beautiful movements. I came across a great article by Lubov Fadeeva, a flamenco dancer. He describes Michael’s dancing accurately and intriguingly, and emphasises the importance of individuality in artistic creativity: “He dances in the flow of free creation. It should be noted that even the moves he performs on stage over and over again are not mechanically repeated like a stuck record. No, he can continue any of his dances by free improvisation at any moment. And it never looks out of sync with his personal style; instead, it opens new facets of his fathomless inner creator. This is what no impersonator can do. Only the creator of the dance can update and renew his dance naturally and improvise freely, and still be himself. No one else can plunge into his sacrament. This is his personal domain, just like every person has his or her own body and his or her own place on Earth.” How marvellous. “When Michael Jackson hit the stage, he danced in ecstasy. And it’s obvious to the spectator. All the best dancers and musicians enter a peculiar state of mind when they create. Art in its highest form is impossible without the ability to work with the subconscious, and without using altered states of awareness and intuition. Without this, it’s not art but simply cheap craft.” TBC Read more of my work at www.aloversdance.com 

#essay #dance #dancing #spiritual #michaeljackson #isadoraduncan #dianaszabo #art #artist #music #love #spirituality #rhythm

[aion-rsa]

Dark Horse Comics’ July 2017 Solicitations

Dark Horse has provided CBR with covers and solicit information for products shipping in July 2017. When you’re through checking out these solicitations, be sure to visit CBR’s Indie Comics Forum and discuss these Dark Horse releases with fellow readers.

Dark Horse Solicitations – Last Six Months

Product shipping June 2017

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Aliens: Dead Orbit #4 (of 4)

James Stokoe (W/A/Cover)

On sale July 26

FC, 32 pages • $3.99 • Miniseries

With one last gambit aboard the space station, Wascylewski finds himself ambushed by two more deadly xenomorphs that will stop at nothing until he’s dead.

The conclusion to Orc Stain creator James Stokoe’s thrilling and claustrophobic Aliens story!

Aliens: Defiance Volume 2 TP

Brian Wood (W), Stephen Thompson (A), Tony Brescini (A), Eduardo Francisco (A), Dan Jackson (C), and Massimo Carnevale (Cover)

On sale Sept 13

FC, 152 pages • $19.99 • TP, 7” x 10”

Colonial Marine Private First Class Zula Hendricks is AWOL and on a mission to prove her mettle by eradicating the Alien species. She must battle with xenomorphs, fend off space pirates, and elude the insidious Weyland-Yutani corporation that wants their freighter back, all while facing rehabilitation from an old war injury.

Collects Aliens: Defiance #7–#12.

American Gods: Shadows #5

Neil Gaiman (W), P. Craig Russell (W/A), Scott Hampton (A/C), Glenn Fabry (Cover), and David Mack (Variant cover)

On sale July 12

FC, 32 pages • $3.99 • Ongoing

Strange things continue to plague Shadow and Wednesday as their mad American road trip takes them all the way to a surreal roadside attraction, the House on the Rock, where they encounter Mr. Nancy and the world’s largest carousel!

The Hugo, Bram Stoker, Locus, World Fantasy, and Nebula award–winning novel and upcoming Starz television series by Neil Gaiman is adapted as a comic series for the first time!

A Starz TV show!

“Russell’s lyrical layouts bring Gaiman’s visual, vivid prose to life like no other artist.”—Comic Book Resources

Angel Season 11 #7

Featuring Angelus and Darla!

Corinna Bechko (W), Zé Carlos (A), Michelle Madsen (C), Scott Fischer (Cover), and Stephanie Hans (Variant cover)

On sale July 19

FC, 32 pages • $3.99 • Ongoing

On a ship filled with zombies, pirates, and a plague of zombie-creating beetles, Angel is torn between saving his past evil self—to save his own future—and making sure that the ship he is on never reaches land.

“If the past is haunting Angel, there’s no telling where this story can go, but I’m eager to see where. The story is intriguing and the art top notch.”—SciFiPulse

Art of Over the Garden Wall HC & Ltd. Ed. HC

Sean Edgar (W) and Patrick McHale (W)

On sale Sept 13

FC, 184 pages • $39.99 • HC, 10” x 11”

FC, 184 pages • $49.99 • Ltd. Ed. HC, 10” x 11”

Venture into the Unknown! A complete tour through the development and production of the hit animated miniseries Over the Garden Wall, this volume contains hundreds of pieces of concept art and sketches, and a comprehensive look at the show’s breathtaking production art. Also includes commentary from creators Patrick McHale and Nick Cross, interviews with the cast and crew, and more!

Never-before-seen sketches and a comprehensive look at the production art behind the multiple-award-winning show!

Limited to 1, 000 copies Worldwide.

The Art of Rick and Morty HC

WHOA, ART BOOK! WUBBA LUBBA DUB-DUB!

James Siciliano (W), Justin Roiland (P), James McDermott (P), Jason Boesch (P), Carlos Ortega (P), and Andrew DeLange (P)

On sale Sept 12

FC, 224 pages • $39.99 • HC, 9” x 12”

The animated science-fiction adventures seen in Rick and Morty are irreverent, shocking, and hilarious—from the cynical and rapid-fire one-liners to the grotesque and endearing character designs. Now, take a deep transdimensional dive into the creation of these many insane universes with The Art of Rick and Morty!

Exclusive never-before-seen concept and production art from the making of the hit animated series!

Bankshot #2 (of 5)

Alex de Campi (W), ChrisCross (A/Cover), and Snakebite Cortez (C)

On sale July 26

FC, 32 pages • $3.99 • Miniseries

Marcus King was shot in the back, paralyzed, and left for dead. But fate, a beautiful woman, and science intervened. Now King has returned, better than ever, on a mission to take down the most dangerous adversary from his past: the Dutchman. Spies! Intrigue! Betrayal!

Written by Eisner nominee Alex de Campi (Archie vs. Predator).

Art by ChrisCross (Convergence: Justice League of America).

The Black Beetle: Kara Bocek HC

Francesco Francavilla (W/A/Cover)

On sale Sept 6

FC, 56 pages • $14.99 • HC, 7” x 10”

The masked American hero ventures to the Middle East incognito (as Tom Sawyer) to fight Nazis in pursuit of a mysterious object of terrible power—a weapon of unknown origin, older than the pyramids, which could fuel the Thousand-Year Reich of Hitler’s dreams.

This story originally appeared in Dark Horse Presents #28-#32.

Afterlife with Archie cocreator returns to his acclaimed original series!

Black Hammer #11

Jeff Lemire (W/Variant cover), Dean Ormston (A/Cover), and Dave Stewart (C)

On sale July 19

FC, 32 pages • $3.99 • Ongoing

He was born into the Red Tribes of Mars. He walked the streets of Spiral City as a police officer by day, vigilante hero by night. And now he’s trapped in the sleepy-but-sinister Rockwood. In each of these places, Barbalien has been an outsider. He’s never felt at home. Maybe, in the end, home is not a location . . . it’s something to find in other people.

B.P.R.D.: The Devil You Know #1

Mike Mignola (W/Variant cover), Scott Allie (W), Laurence Campbell (A), Dave Stewart (C), and Duncan Fegredo (Cover)

On sale July 26

FC, 32 pages • $3.99 • Ongoing

Before they were vanquished by the BPRD, Lovecraftian monsters created a Hell on Earth. Now Liz Sherman leads a crew through monster-infested ruins on the most important rescue mission of her life. As society tries to rebuild, strange cults vie for influence, and a demon emerges to lead the way . . .

Briggs Land: Lone Wolves #2 (of 6)

Brian Wood (W), Mack Chater (A), Lee Loughridge (C), Matthew Woodson (Cover), and Fiona Staples (Variant cover)

On sale July 12

FC, 32 pages • $3.99 • Miniseries

When Isaac Briggs went overseas to war, he shed his quiet, reserved personality for something fiercer and far more nationalist than the rest of his family are prepared to deal with.

Brian Wood’s critically acclaimed series returns for its next chapter in an even more relevant postelection America.

Briggs Land is currently in development for a television series at AMC TV!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 11 #9

Christos Gage (W), Georges Jeanty (P/Variant cover), Dexter Vines (I/Variant cover), Dan Jackson (C), and Steve Morris (Cover)

On sale July 19

FC, 32 pages • $3.99 • Ongoing

The great escape is underway as Buffy, Faith, and Willow infiltrate headquarters at the Safe Zone. Everything and everyone they expected to stop their mission is in the way. The question is, can two powerless girls and one Slayer succeed with these ridiculous odds? Elsewhere: unexpected vampire complications . . .

Featuring everyone’s favorite “bad” Slayer, Faith Lehane!

“Any Buffy fan is going to be stoked about this new series, Season 11, and a new story arc of awesomeness!”—ComicWow!TV

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus: Season 8 Volume 1 TP

Joss Whedon (W), Brian K. Vaughan (W), Drew Goddard (W), Jeph Loeb (W), Georges Jeanty (P), Karl Moline (P), Paul Lee (P), Cliff Richards (P), Andy Owens (I), Dave Stewart (C), Michelle Madsen (C), and Jo Chen (Cover)

On sale Sept 13

FC, 592 pages • $24.99 • TP, 6” x 9”

Series creator Joss Whedon brought Buffy the Vampire Slayer back to life with this comics-only follow-up to Season 7 of the television show. Aptly named Season 8, these comics are the official sequel to Buffy and continue where the live-action series left off with the Slayer, her friends, and their ongoing challenge to fight the forces of darkness.

This oversized omnibus edition is one of two volumes that will contain the entirety of Season 8. Contains Buffy Season 8 Library Edition Volumes 1–2 (excluding sketchbook materials), all series covers (Buffy Season 8 #1–#20), the Willow one-shot Goddesses and Monsters, and the “Always Darkest” short from MySpace Dark Horse Presents #24.

A New York Times bestseller!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Big Bads & Monsters Adult Coloring Book TP

Karl Moline (A/Cover), Georges Jeanty (A), Pablo Churin (A), Yishan Li (A), Newsha Ghasemi (A), Stephen Byrne (A), and others

On sale Sept 6

b&w, 96 pages • $14.99 • TP, 10” x 10”

Demons, horror, and fantasy fill these original illustrations based on Joss Whedon’s cult-classic television series. Inside this volume focused on their greatest foes, you’ll find heroes Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles fighting to save the world from the likes of the Master, Angelus, Spike, Drusilla, and other supernatural beasts and beings. Features forty-five original black-and-white illustrations.

Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Joss Whedon’s cult-classic television series!

Colder Omnibus TP

Paul Tobin (W) and Juan Ferreyra (A/Cover)

On sale Sept 27

FC, 424 pages • $24.99 • TP, 7” x 10”

Declan Thomas, the former patient of an insane asylum that was destroyed in a fire, has the strange ability to step inside a person’s madness—and sometimes cure it. He hopes to one day cure his own, but time is running out, as a demonic predator pursues him.

Collects the entire Colder series.

Written by Eisner Award winner Paul Tobin (Bandette)!

Art by Green Arrow’s Juan Ferreyra!

“A fantastically twisted comic that uses horror elements brilliantly to create a suspenseful tale absolutely worth reading.”—Graphic Policy

Dark Horse Comics/DC Comics: Mask TP

Various (W/A)

On sale Sept 13

FC, 256 pages • $24.99 • TP, 7” x 10”

Grifter and the Mask team up and face off against smugglers at a Las Vegas weapons show. After destroying a planet, the Mask has a bounty on his head and Lobo hot on his tail in a mind-bending, time-twisting showdown between madmen. And last but not least, the Joker stumbles upon the mask, which inspires a new superpowered reign for the Clown Prince of Crime!

This volume collects Grifter/The Mask #1–#2, Lobo vs. the Mask #1–#2, and Joker/Mask #1–#4.

Collects never-before-reprinted material.

The Dark North HC

Martin Dunelind (W), Peter Bergting (A), Henrik Pettersson (A), Joakim Ericsson (A), Magnus Olsson (A), and Lukas Thelin (A/Cover)

On sale Sept 27

FC, 232 pages • $34.99 • HC, 9” x 11”

Originally crowdfunded in 2015, this illustrated prose/art book fusion features five unique tales ranging from Norse mythology to science fiction. The Dark North showcases artwork by Scandinavia’s leading illustrators and concept artists Peter Bergting, Henrik Pettersson, Joakim Ericsson, Magnus Olsson, and Lukas Thelin, prose by Martin Dunelind, and a foreword by author and filmmaker Clive Barker!

Foreword by Clive Barker!

Featuring artwork by Baltimore artist Peter Bergting, as well as popular game artists Henrik Pettersson, Magnus Olsson, Joakim Ericsson, and Lukas Thelin!

Dept. H #16

Matt Kindt (W/A/Cover) and Sharlene Kindt (C)

On sale July 19

FC, 28 pages • $3.99 • Ongoing

Looking into Hari Hardy’s past, it’s clear that Mia’s father’s long history has made him the author of his own destruction, and perhaps Mia’s as well. Meanwhile, some of the Dept. H crew appear to be going insane, for they feel compelled to aid a sea turtle older than time . . . and it demands to be worshiped?

Dragon Age: Knight Errant #3 (of 5)

Nunzio DeFilippis (W), Christina Weir (W), Fernando Heinz Furukawa (A), Michael Atiyeh (C), and Sachin Teng (Cover)

On sale July 12

FC, 32 pages • $3.99 • Miniseries

With Varric’s help, Vaea sets out on a rescue mission for the Inquisition. After dodging societal niceties with the stuffy prince Sebastian and the even stuffier Seneschal Granger, Vaea catches up to her quarry . . . only to discover the mission will be far from that simple!

Empowered Deluxe Edition Volume 3 HC

Adam Warren (W/A/Cover)

On sale Sept 13

b&w, 704 pages • $59.99 • HC, 6 1/2″ x 9”

Prepare your puny intellect for wonders awe-inspiring, comedy gut-busting, and images steamy within Adam Warren’s Empowered Deluxe Edition Volume 3. Collected within its vast confines are Empowered Volumes 7, 8, and 9 plus a priceless hoard of unpublished artwork, author’s notes, and arcane wisdom both illuminating and terrifying to behold!

Hardcover edition, 704 pages, limited to initial printing only!

2017 marks the tenth anniversary of Empowered!

The End League Library Edition HC

Rick Remender (W), Mat Broome (A), Eric Canete (A/Cover), Sean Parsons (A), Ashley MacDonald (A), Wendy Broome (C), Matthew Wilson (C), and Naomi Baker (C)

On sale Sept 20

FC, 248 pages • $39.99 • HC, 8″ x 12”

The genre-bending New York Times bestseller is now available in a deluxe oversized format! A thematic merging of The Lord of the Rings and Watchmen, The End League follows the last remaining superheroes on Earth as they embark on a desperate quest to find the one artifact that can save humanity—the Hammer of Thor. Superstar writer Rick Remender (Fear Agent, Tokyo Ghost) is joined by comics legends Mat Broome (X-Men, Batman) and Eric Canete (Iron Man, Martian Manhunter) on a perilous journey to save the world!

Collects all nine issues of the series.

Oversize library format matches the best-selling Fear Agent library editions!

Game of Thrones Jon Snow “Battle of the Bastards” Limited Edition Bust

On sale Aug 23 • Measures 6” from base to the top of his head, plus sword extension • $89.99

The pulse-pounding climax of the most recent HBO season of Game of Thrones was the “Battle of the Bastards,” where Jon Snow faces off in a life-or-death struggle with evil Ramsay Bolton—considered one of the most ambitious and elaborately choreographed battles ever staged for filmed entertainment. A key moment is when Jon prepares for his last stand by drawing his sword Longclaw and facing the Bolton army seemingly alone. This is the moment sculptor Dave Cortes and his studio capture.

This prepainted bust measures 6” from the base to the top of his head, plus sword extension. Edition size TBD at press time. Full-color deluxe packaging with a certificate of authenticity.

Groo: Play of the Gods #1 (of 4)

The return of Groo!

Sergio Aragonés (W/A/Cover), Mark Evanier (W), John Ercek (C), and Tom Luth (C)

On sale July 12

FC, 32 pages • $3.99 • Miniseries

Shakespeare wrote, “The play’s the thing.” Or was that Nathan Lane? Either way, the play matters, whether you be man or god . . . or even Groo.

In this, the first installment in the newest Groo miniseries (which is continued from the last Groo miniseries), the stupidest hero in the comic book shop finds himself in a new village . . . a village where you pray to the proper god or you pray for your life. And even the other gods know that they are all players. It’s from the award-winning team of Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier, with lettering by Stan Sakai, coloring by Tom Luth, and a running commentary by the gods above.

The all-star team returns: Sergio Aragonés, Mark Evanier, Tom Luth, and Stan Sakai.

Eisner and Harvey Award–winning creators and an Eisner Award–winning title!

Halo: UNSC Vulture Limited Edition Ship Replica

On sale Aug 9

6” limited edition • $49.99

The UNSC Vulture, also known as the AC-220 Gunship, is a heavy gunship used by the United Nations Space Command during the early years of the Human-Covenant War. The premier aerial combat vehicle for extended air-to-ground battles, the Vulture was originally produced to combat the rebel threat during the early years of the Insurrection.

The Vulture is heavily featured in the hit game Halo Wars 2, and now you can own this beautifully detailed polyresin, limited edition 6” replica. Includes display base. Limited edition of 2,000.

Hard Boiled HC (Second Edition)

Eisner Award Winner!

Frank Miller (W), Geof Darrow (W/A/Cover), and Dave Stewart (C)

On sale Sept 13

FC, 136 pages • $19.99 • HC, 8” x 12”

Carl Seltz is a suburban insurance investigator, a loving husband, and a devoted father. Nixon is a berserk, homicidal tax collector racking up mind-boggling body counts in a diseased urban slaughterhouse. Unit Four is the ultimate robot killing machine—and the last hope of the future’s enslaved mechanical servants. And they’re all the same psychotic entity.

From comic masters Geof Darrow and Frank Miller!

Recolored by Dave Stewart!

Collected in hardcover for the first time ever!

Joe Golem: Occult Detective—The Outer Dark #3 (of 3)

Mike Mignola (W), Christopher Golden (W), Patric Reynolds (A), Dave Stewart (C), and Dave Palumbo (Cover)

On sale July 26

FC, 32 pages • $3.99 • Miniseries

Joe discovers that the supernatural voices driving men insane may have roots in another dimension, and Church takes matters into his own hands when Lori starts to ask too many questions.

“Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden are a heck of a team, and Patric Reynolds continues to complement them perfectly by bringing unique worlds to life stunningly with his art.”—Big Comic Page

Lifeformed: Cleo Makes Contact TP

The fight for Earth’s future!

Matt Mair Lowery (W) and Cassie Anderson (A/Cover)

On sale Sept 6

FC, 192 pages • $12.99 • TP, 6” x 9”

In the wake of an alien invasion—and her father’s death—a young girl must fight for the future of Earth. Aided by a shape-shifting rebel alien posing as her father, the unlikely pair bond, fight back, and ponder what it means to be human. The powers of choice, courage, and unity are examined in Lifeformed: Cleo Makes Contact, an unforgettable debut work from creators Matt Mair Lowery and Cassie Anderson.

The first work by up-and-coming creators Matt Mair Lowery and Cassie Anderson!

Young adult sci-fi adventure starring a relatable, endearing young heroine.

Mass Effect: Andromeda—Tempest Silver Finish Limited-Edition Ship Replica

On sale July 19

8”, limited edition silver ship • $49.99

Mass Effect: Andromeda is a hit, and the new Tempest ship is key to the intergalactic exploring experience. Long and sleek, the new design is an instant classic.

Our 8” replica is also a hit, so we are offering collectors a special silver-colored, metal-plated limited edition. Approximately 8” long, this collector piece captures all the detail of the regular edition. Only 1,000 will be produced for worldwide distribution.

Mass Effect: Discovery #3 (of 4)

John Dombrow (W), Jeremy Barlow (W), Gabriel Guzmán (A/Cover), Michael Atiyeh (C), and Kate Niemczyk (Variant cover)

On sale July 26

FC, 32 pages • $3.99 • Miniseries

Following a lead to the lawless space station Omega, Tiran Kandros is closer than ever to uncovering the Andromeda Initiative’s biggest secret. Unfortunately, so is the deadly Agent Zeta! In a story that ties in to the highly anticipated Mass Effect: Andromeda game, writers John Dombrow and Jeremy Barlow and artist Gabriel Guzmán team up to create the next exciting chapter of the Mass Effect comics series!

From Eisner Award–nominated writer Jeremy Barlow!

Direct tie-in with Mass Effect: Andromeda for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One!

Misfits of Avalon Volume 3: The Future in the Wind TP

Kel McDonald (W/A/Cover)

On sale Sept 27

b&w, 216 pages • $14.99 • TP, 6” x 9”

Smart-mouthed teens Elsie, Kimber, Morgan, and Rae have enough to handle with magical rings, talking dogs, and faeries, but when they discover that the knight they’ve been battling for Excalibur is a familiar face with a mission of his own, they must get to the bottom of the real intentions behind the quest they were given.

Mister X: The Modern Age TP

Dean Motter (W/A/Cover)

On sale Sept 20

FC, 368 pages • $29.99 • TP, 7” x 10”

In the retrofuturistic metropolis of Radiant City, its mysterious creator, Mister X, must protect the city and its residents from the architecture of the city itself, which poses a danger to all those within it! Collecting every Mister X comic published by Dark Horse Comics, this trade includes Condemned, Excavations, and Razed, along with never-before-seen behind-the-scenes material!

All of Dark Horse’s Mister X material collected in an affordable paperback!

A great jumping-on point to the classic series!

Moebius Library: The Art of Edena HC

Moebius (W/A/Cover)

On sale Sept 20

FC, 176 pages • $34.99 • HC, 8” x 10”

A companion volume to the critically acclaimed and New York Times best-selling World of Edena graphic novel, Moebius Library: The Art of Edena collects four fantastic Edena-related short stories and a mother lode of Moebius illustrations. A celebration of the imagery of Edena and the creative enthusiasm Moebius held for his Edena universe, this volume collects the short stories “Seeing Naples,” “Another Planet,” “The Repairmen,” and “Dying to See Naples,” as Moebius explores his imagination with Stel and Atan, two of his favorite characters.

Out-of-print stories and hard-to-find images—collected in an affordable hardcover!

The second volume in Dark Horse’s Moebius Library series!

“Glowingly illustrated in the elegant clear-line art and rich colors for which Moebius is justly revered, the book careens spectacularly through science fiction, fantasy, allegory, pop psychology, and psychedelia.”—Publishers Weekly

The Once and Future Queen #5 (of 5)

Adam P. Knave (W), D.J. Kirkbride (W), and Nickolas Brokenshire (A/Cover)

On sale July 12

FC, 32 pages • $3.99 • Miniseries

Enemies are revealed and plans are set in motion as the Fae go to war! Can Rani, Gwen, Lance, and Merlin save humanity? And even if they do . . . at what cost?

“Fun, upbeat, and Wonderfully diverse.” —Big Comic Page

Predator: Hunters #3 (of 5)

Chris Warner (W), Francisco Ruiz Velasco (A/Variant cover), and Doug Wheatley (Cover)

On sale July 5

FC, 32 pages • $3.99 • Miniseries

Contact! The assault team encounters the Predator at night on the tropical island! First blood goes to the alien hunter, but ten-to-one odds and machine guns favor the humans . . . unless there’s something about their quarry they don’t know!

Rebels: These Free and Independent States #5 (of 8)

Brian Wood (W), Andrea Mutti (A), Lauren Affe (C), and Matthew Taylor (Cover)

On sale July 26

FC, 32 pages • $3.99 • Miniseries

As a veteran of the War of Independence, Seth Abbott retired to his Vermont cabin and lived a quiet life. When his son John returns from the War of 1812 to a bustling, vibrant America that’s finally found its place in the world, what awaits him?

“Gutsy, well-written and with solid artwork, it is the first part of a grounded historical tale that will elevate the literary value of anyone’s pull list.”—Word of the Nerd

Shadows on the Grave #6 (of 8)

Richard Corben (W/A/Cover)

On sale July 12

FC, 32 pages • $3.99 • Miniseries

A hunter becomes the hunted when he ventures into restricted woods, but the nature of his adversary is truly terrifying. Recurring dreams haunt a man every year around his birthday. And Denaeus surprises his enemy, the king, when he reappears with an offer to help.

“There’s also something about Corben’s distinctive artwork that’s inherently unnerving, from the grotesquely exaggerated facial features to his tense, claustrophobic panels and layouts.”—Big Comic Page

The Shaolin Cowboy: Who’ll Stop the Reign? #4 (of 4)

Geof Darrow (W/A/Cover), Dave Stewart (C), and Genndy Tartakovsky (Variant cover)

On sale July 19

FC, 32 pages • $3.99 • Miniseries

Bullets, claws, and fists fly when the evil congress of King Crab and the Revengers play their final trump card and attempt to pass a ban on the Shaolin Cowboy, who filibusters heads in the most dogged way possible. Who has the stronger constitution? Find out in issue #4!!!!!!

Star Trek: The Original Series Adult Coloring Book Volume 2—Where No Man Has Gone Before TP

Juann Cabal (A), Will Conrad (A), Gabriel Guzmán (A/Cover), and Derlis Santacruz (A)

On sale Sept 13

b&w, 96 pages • $14.99 • TP, 10” x 10”

The coloring voyage continues with Star Trek: The Original Series Adult Coloring Book—Where No Man Has Gone Before. This beautifully illustrated volume features all-new, stunningly detailed black-and-white images from seasons 2 and 3 of the iconic sixties television show. Printed on high-quality stock, each illustration offers an array of diverse details to color as faithfully or as wildly as you choose and is single sided to avoid unsightly bleed-though. This is a must-have collectible for Star Trek fans throughout the galaxy!

Forty-five brand-new black-and-white images from the second and third seasons of the classic science-fiction series!

Zodiac Starforce: Cries of the Fire Prince #1 (of 4)

Zodiac Starforce returns!

Kevin Panetta (W), Paulina Ganucheau (A/Cover), and Jen Bartel (Variant cover)

On sale July 5

FC, 32 pages • $3.99 • Miniseries

An elite group of teenage girls with magical powers have sworn to protect our planet against dark creatures . . . as long as they can get out of class! Known as the Zodiac Starforce, these high-school girls aren’t just combating math tests—they’re also battling monsters!

After defeating a former ZS member and her mean-girl minions, the girls thought they’d get a little break! But a new big bad’s come out to play, and demons are starting to overrun the downtown!

The post Dark Horse Comics’ July 2017 Solicitations appeared first on CBR.

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[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND 8/17/18 – Crazy Rich Asians, Mile 22, Alpha and More

I’m going to do things a little different this week, because one of my absolutely favorites from Sundance is coming out this weekend, and after seeing it again last week, it’s probably going to end up in my Top 5 for the year, and that is…

JULIET, NAKED (Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions)

I’ve been a fan of Nick Hornby’s writing for a very long time, but when I received a copy of his new book in 2009, I was immediately caught up in its story of a has-been musician, his diehard fan and his ignored wife. I was really excited to hear that it would be adapted by director Jesse Peretz, who had been making big waves (and got an Emmy nod) for directing shows like Girls, New Girl and GLOW. The general story revolves around Rose Byrne’s Annie, a woman living in a British seaside town married to Chris O’Dowd’s Duncan, an avid fan of an American singer-songwriter named Tucker Crowe. Duncan runs a website dedicated to his idol, but when he receives a previously unheard demo recording called “Juliet, Naked,” he gets into a squabble with Annie, because she is quite vocal about how much she hates it (mainly to get Duncan’s goat). When Duncan sleeps with a co-worker, Annie kicks him out, but then the real Tucker Crowe (played by Ethan Hawke) gets in touch with Annie (over her negative review of the rare demos), they begin a transatlantic correspondence that leads to them meeting and more. It’s another great story from Hornby in the vein of About a Boy and High Fidelity, one that creates an amazing portrait of this woman who feels she’s in a rut and how she connects with the famous musician who walked out of a concert 20 years earlier and has been raising a young son in upstate New York.

This is a fantastic romantic comedy from Peretz that’s produced by Judd Apatow and others with all-star writing team including Peretz’s sister Eugenia, Jim Taylor (Sideways) and his wife Tamara Jenkins (The Savages), who all did an amazing job adapting Hornby’s work.  

Here’s my interview with Jesse Peretz over at NextBestPicture... Enjoy!

INTERVIEW WITH JESSE PERETZ

Juliet, Naked will open in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, expand to more cities next week and then hopefully be fairly wide on August 31.

But that isn’t the only Ethan Hawke movie this week, nope. The actor is having quite a good year indeed...

On top of that, Hawke’s latest film as a director, Blaze (Sundance Selects), will be released in Austin on Friday, as it slowly rolls out to arrive in New York City on September 6 and then in L.A. later in September.

Blaze tells the story of Blaze Foley, played by musician Ben Dickey, who was the lesser-known blues singer who collaborated with his friend Townes Van Zandt. Not knowing much about the Austin native, this is a fascinating film by Hawke that shows a lot of his dysfunctional relationship with his Jewish writer wife (and the film’s co-writer) Sybil Rosen, played by Alia Shakat (who is simply fantastic in the role). Musician Charlie Sexton pulls off a respectable version of Van Zandt, and look for cameos by the likes of Sam Rockwell, Steve Zahn, Kris Kristofferson and Hawke’s long-time collaborator, Richard Linklater.

This is another great music-based film from Hawke, and a much better narrative feature than his earlier features, 2006’s The Hottest State and 2001’s Chelsea Walls. There’s also a connection between Foley and Hawke’s Juliet, Naked character, because the fictional Tucker Crowe similarly became the subject of urban legends after vanishing from the public eye following a concert. (Foley was actually killed in a scuffle after recording a live album at one of his club performances, which acts as the framing device for the film.)

And now, back to our previously scheduled wide releases, and how ironic that the proverbial “Dog Days of Summer” would begin last weekend with an actual movie called Dog Days, and it bombed? And a giant shark movie starring Jason Statham opened with almost $45 million… crazy times! Yeah, these last few weekends of August have never been known as a good time to release movies, and most movies that end up here are ones that studios just want to get off their coffers before their even slower fall months. That would normally be the case, but that is definitely not the case with…

CRAZY RICH ASIANS (New Line)

The first August anomaly is this romantic-comedy based on Kevin Kwan’s best-selling book, which is the first major studio movie since The Joy Luck Club25 years ago to feature a predominantly Asian cast. This one is about an Asian college professor who takes his Asian girlfriend to Singapore for his best friend’s wedding where she discovers that his family is super-rich and he’s a very in-demand bachelor.

The movie features an amazing cast that includes Constance Wu from the hit ABC sitcom Fresh off the Boat, veteran Chinese actress Michelle Yeoh, comic superstar Ken Jeong (Dr. Ken) as well as fresher talent like rapper Awkwafina, last seen in Ocean’s 8, Gemma Chan and newcomer Henry Golding as the male lead. The movie is directed by Jon M. Chu, who has directed an odd number of movies from G.I. Joe: Retaliationto Step Up 3 and the Jem and the Holograms movie, the latter a huge bomb despite being made for not so much money.

Crazy Rich Asians is a romantic comedy, and obviously, there’s a limited audience for the genre normally, but possibly even more when you have Asians in every role, because you’re never sure whether women of other ethnicities will be as interested in this as they might be with Valentine’s Day or other rom-com hits like The Proposal or Pretty Woman. Of course, we can also look at the long-standing legs of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which drew in a large Greek audience at first, but word-of-mouth helped lead it to $241 million domestic, the highest gross for a rom-com ever.

There haven’t been that many successful rom-coms in recent years unless you include Mamma Mia: Here We go Again or Greg Berlanti’s Love Simon, the latter which grossed $40.8 million opening in March with $11.7 million. Crazy Rich Asians is likely to sway more towards the former, I’d imagine.

What’s interesting and maybe not unexpected is that the Asian-American community has been rallying around the movie, whether or not they’ve read the book or even like romantic comedy films, with many entire theaters/screenings being bought up in advance. It’s likely the community realizes that Crazy Rich Asians will need to succeed if they’re going to see more Asians and Asian-Americans in significant leading roles. Even so, you have to remember that Asians only make up 6% of the U.S. population and maybe a little more in Canada, so how much impact can a movie have even if every single Asian person in the country goes to see it? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Crazy Rich Asians is opening on Wednesday, which kind of throws a wrench in trying to project how the movie might do, because a.) people who desperately want to see the movie might rush out to see it on Weds if b.) some might not even realize it opens on Wednesday and will wait for Thursday or Friday. (There weren’t any Tuesday previews to give us any sort of hint of what’s to come.) One presumes the point of the earlier opening is to help drive word-of-mouth for the weekend, although New Line also gave the movie sneak previews last Wednesday, which might do the trick.  Reviews are excellent with it currently holding a respectable 96% on Rotten Tomatoes but there are many more reviews to come.

Expect the movie to do big business on Wednesday and Thursday, possibly $9 to 10 million, and then another $20 million plus over the weekend, although it shouldn’t be surprising if it does more than $30 million in its first five days. After all, we’re definitely entering new territory here. Even so, word-of-mouth should help it over the rest of the summer and into September, so don’t be surprised if it ends up making close to $100 million or more, especially if it’s as good as I’ve heard.

MILE 22 (STXfilms)

A movie hoping to bring in the business that will have little to no interest in Crazy Rich Asiansis this new action-thriller from actor Mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg, who now have made three movies based on real events: Lone Survivor (’13, $125 mil. Gross), Deepwater Horizon (’16, $61.4 mil.) and Patriots Day (’16, $31.9 mil.). That’s a fairly dramatic drop from their first movie to their last one, and Mile 22 is an original story not based on real events about a CIA task force who have to protect an asset from terrorists over the course of 22 miles. (And yes, that does sound a lot like the Bruce Willis-Mos Def movie 16 Blocksfrom 2006, thanks for noticing.)

Besides Wahlberg, it stars Lauren Cohan from The Walking Dead, John Malkovich (who also was in Deepwater Horizon), MMA champ and WWE contender Ronda Rousy, Indonesian martial arts star Iko Uwais (The Raid) and Berg himself. It’s a great cast but we’ve seen similar movies like this one with great casts that don’t do so well from Hotel Artemis earlier this summer to John Hillcoat’s Triple 9 in 2016, although both of them looked like they could be good.

Obviously, Wahlberg is going to be this film’s biggest draw, but his filmography has also run the gamut of hits and bombs. Last year, Wahlberg appeared in Michael Bay’s Transformers: The Last Knight, the comedy sequel Daddy’s Home 2 and the beleaguered Ridley Scott drama All the Money in the World, continuing his run of two to three movies a year with varying degrees of quality and success.

Like so many other movies in theaters and quite a few from STX, Mile 22 is a Chinese co-production, which doesn’t mean a heck of a lot for the film’s domestic success. Last year’s The Foreigner starring Pierce Brosnan and Jackie Chan is a good example as that topped out at $34.3 million domestic after a $13.1 million opening, although that movie did three times its domestic take overseas.

This might be why STX decided to dump the movie into late August, because maybe it isn’t as strong as some of the Berg-Wahlberg’s previous offerings, but is more of a throwaway action-thriller instead. The studio also isn’t screening for critics until Wednesday night, the day before it opens for Thursday previews, so I wouldn’t expect it to be one of “Da Bergs’” better-reviewed films.

On top of that, there’s also just too much competition for older males in theaters, so this might have a hard time doing more than $15 million this weekend, a third place showing, as it struggles to make $35 million by summer’s end.

(Note: I may run a mini-review and make a few changes above after I see the movie tonight.)

ALPHA (Sony)

The odd dog or wolf of the weekend is this big screen adventure epic set during the Ice Age starring Kodi Smit-McPhee (X-Men: Apocalypse), which looks a lot like Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 BC. Hopefully, it isn’t nearly as bad. (See my review below. It isn’t.)

Alphais the new movie from Albert Hughes, one half of the Hughes Brothers, who broke out with urban crime films like Menace II Society and Dead Presidents before making From Hell with Johnny Depp and The Book of Eli with Denzel Washington. After the latter, the two went their separate ways and after a couple failed projects, Albert decided to make this very different movie as his solo dramatic feature as a director. It’s a strange choice for sure, but Sony have doubled down by giving the movie an IMAX release to push its big-screen nature.

There should be enough awareness of this movie being that it was supposed to come out last November and then earlier this year – I was seeing trailers for this in front of Thor: Ragnarok in early November and over the Christmas holidays as well – but Sony clearly doesn’t have much faith in the movie as they moved it to the dumping ground of late August. The studio has also completely changed the marketing as the movie’s release neared, pushing it more for the wolves that might get women and kids excited to see it. Personally, I don’t see the switch in marketing gears helping much, as I was already tuning out about the movie after seeing the trailers too much last year. (Reviews, surprisingly, are STELLAR so far, but there are only eight on Rotten Tomatoes, so that might change?)

Although people might know about the movie, it really doesn’t look that appealing from the marketing, and it won’t help that schools have already started in many places cutting potential business for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Frankly, it will be a shocker to me if Alpha makes more than $7 million this weekend even with the higher incent and price for IMAX tickets.

Mini-Review: When I was younger, I used to love watching pre-historic epics like 1 Million Years B.C. on television. Hopefully, some young boys and girls will be as inspired by watching Albert Hughes’ solo narrative debut as a director, but Alpha is definitely not the type of movie that should be watched on a television set.

It gets off to a rough start with young Keda (Kodi Smit-Mcphee) not living up to his chieftain father’s hopes as a warrior. When the tribe takes on a herd of buffalo, Keda gets knocked off a cliff and he’s left behind for dead by the tribe. Trying to survive, Keda faces off against a pack of wolves and one of the wolf pack is injured in the melée. The caring young man brings the injured wolf along on his journey of survival as the two of them work together to catch prey and survive. 

This is where Alpha picks up greatly, becoming tale of a boy and his “dog” survival tale that’s charming and heart-warming and not nearly as corny or obvious as the earlier storytelling might lead you to believe. (It doesn’t take long to get over the awkward decision to begin with the buffalo hunt, then cut back a  week as Keda is about to go over the cliff, and then show the buffalo hunt again, throwing Keda over the cliff for real the second time.)

If nothing else, one needs to commend the impressive job by Hughes and team -- from the animal trainers to the visual FX department, sound and music – for bringing this tale to life in a way that keeps you glued to the screen and benefits greatly from the IMAX 3D projection. It might be good to note that all of the film’s dialogue is in some ancient prehistoric dialect, so if your kids are too young to read subtitles, then they may get frustrated by not understanding what is being said.

Though there are problems in the first third, the fact is that if Terrence Malick or Alejandro Innaritu made this exact same movie, it would be thought of as a revelation. The late August release and lesser status of Hughes as a filmmaker will mean this film will mostly be overlooked, which is a true shame.

Rating: 7.5/10

Either way, this weekend could be a close call for #1 between Crazy Rich Asians and the second weekend of The Meg  as both are vying for somewhere in the high-teens to low-$20 millions. Even so, I think the marketing/hype behind the New Line romantic-comedy will be enough to push it over the top to win the weekend.

This week’s top 10 should look something like this…

1. Crazy Rich Asians  (New Line) - $21.5 million N/A 2. The Meg (Warner Bros.) - $19.5 million -56% 3. Mile 22  (STXfilms) - $15.3 million N/A 4. Mission: Impossible – Fallout  (Paramount) - $12 million -40% 5. Christopher Robin  (Disney) - $7.7 million -38% 6. Alpha (Sony) - $7.5 million N/A 7. BlacKkKlansman  (Focus Features) - $7 million -35% 8. The Spy Who Dumped Me  (Lionsgate) - $3.9 million -48% 9. Slender Man  (Screen Gems) - $3.7 million -67% 10. Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again  (Universal) - $3.5 million -40%

LIMITED RELEASES

While I gave some extra attention to Juliet, Naked above, there are a bunch of other limited releases worth checking out this weekend, especially as the wider releases become less interesting to the masses.

First up is The Wife (Sony Pictures Classics), an amazing drama starring Glenn Close as Joan Castleman, wife of the elderly reknowned author Joseph Castleman (Jonathan Pryce), as the couple travel to Stockholm for him to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature along with their son David (Max Irons). Joe can be a handful and Joan finds herself caught in the middle of a domestic feud between her husband and David, while a pesky biographer played by Christian Slater tries to get info from both Joan and David about Joe, a known philanderer. Directed by Swedish filmmaker Björn Runge, best known for his film Happy End, this is a terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside. The Wife will open in New York and L.A., and there will be QnAs in both cities on Friday and Saturday. Glenn Close and screenwriter Meg Wolitzer will be doing QnAs at the Paris Theater in NYC on Friday night after the 7:30 screening, while Wolitzer will also do a QnA on Saturday night. In LA, actress Annie Starke (who plays the younger version of Close’s character) will be doing QnAs on Friday and Saturday nights at the Arclight Hollywood and the Landmark.

A terrific doc worth checking out is Megumi Sasaki’s A Whale of a Tale (Fine Line Media), which opens at the Quad Cinema in New York and then in L.A. on August 24. If you liked the Oscar-winning doc The Cove, this is sort of a follow-up as the filmmaker travels to the town of Taiji in Japan where the dolphin killings continue. AP journalist Jay Alabaster has embedded himself in Taiji since The Cove came out and along with Sasaki, they document the town’s attempts at making necessary changes without giving up their legacy of “whale-hunting” that’s hundreds of years old. This is the type of movie that might make you question your own ecological leanings even as it gives a fairly well-balanced overview of the situation, particularly between the townspeople of Taiji and the world at large.

Another worthwhile doc is Bing Liu’s Minding the Gap (Hulu/Magnolia), a very personal look at the life of the filmmaker over 12 years living in Rockford, Illinois, focusing on two of his skateboarder friends’ whose upbringings affect their lives, including 23-year-old Zack whose relationship deteriorates after the birth of his son, and 17-year-old Keire trying to deal with the death of his father. The film won a jury prize at Sundance for Breakthrough Filmmaking with Steve James acting as exec. producer. It will get a theatrical release at the Metrograph on Friday as well as being available on Hulu before screening on PBS POV in 2019. (I want to add that this is a fantastic film well worth seeking out... Liu is an amazing new and young filmmaker to watch.)

After premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival, the self-explanatory doc Ed Sheeran: Songwriter (Apple Music/Abramorama) will open in select cities. I never got around to watching it, but I’m not really a fan of Sheeran other than him helping to bring the Electric Light Orchestra back together for the Grammys. It opens at the IFC Center on Friday, in L.A. on Aug. 24 and then will be available on Apple Music starting Aug. 28.

A venerable horror franchise returns with its 13th(!) installment Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich (RLJE Films), co-directed by Sonny Laguna and Tommy Wiklund from a script by S. Craig Zahler (Brawl in Cell Block 99). It stars Thomas Lennon from the State as Edgar, as a recently-divorced man who returns to his childhood home where he finds an evil-looking Nazi puppet in his brother’s room. For this one, the unmistakable Udo Kier plays the evil puppet master André Toulon, and it also stars Charlyne Yi, Barbara Crampton, Jenny Pellicer and Nelson Franklin. I hope to watch it soon, but I’ve heard some atrocious things about the overt racism in the movie.

As far as other and hopefully tamer genre films, if you’re in New York City, you can see The Ranger, the directorial debut by Larry Fessenden’s producing partner Jenn Wexler, when it plays at the IFC Center, following its Closing Night premiere at What the Fest?! and Fantasia in Montreal. It will also screen in L.A. on Sept. 7. It stars Chloë Levine as Chelsea, a girl who hangs out with her punk friends who get in trouble when her boyfriend stashes drugs in her bag, so they head to a cabin in the wilderness where they encounter a ranger. It premieres on Thursday night with many QnAs with Wexler, producer Heather Buckley and the cast over the weekend.

A movie that premiered at Sundance that I wasn’t that into was Jeremy Zagar’s adaptation of Justin Torres’ novel We the Animals (The Orchard), about three young boys going through their adolescence under the gaze of parents (Raul Castillo, Sheila Vand) who have their own tumultuous relationship, and are trying to protect the youngest Jonah from heading the same direction as his older siblings. It opens in New York Friday at the Angelika and Landmark 57 West, then will expand to L.A., San Francisco, Boston and Philadelphia next Friday. Although I wasn’t a huge fan of the movie, it is a nice fictional counterpart to Minding the Gap.

Ricky D’Ambrose’s Notes on an Appearance (Grasshopper Films) deals with the disappearance of a young man named David and the two people who go looking for him but become diverted by the strangers they meet on the journey.  It opens at New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center on Friday.

Opening in New York and L.A. on Friday and on Demand Sept. 4is Josh Crockett’s dark comedy Dr. Brinks & Dr. Brinks (Gravitas Ventures) about estranged brother and sister who reunite after the death of their parents.

Based on Lois Duncan’s Y.A. novel of the same name, Down a Dark Hall (Summit/Lionsgate Premiere) stars AnnaSophia Robb as Kit, a difficult girl set to a boarding school to deal with her temper via the headmistress Madame Duret (Uma Thurman) and the other four young women. Also starring Isabelle Fuhrman from Orphan, it opens in select cities, On Demand and on iTunes Friday.

Emmanuel Finkiel’s Memoir of War (Music Box films), opening in New York this Friday at the Film Forum and Film Society of New York and in L.A. at the Laemmle Royal and Regal Edwards Westpark 8 next Friday, adapts Marguerite Duras’ novel The War: A Memoir, and it stars the ever-present Mélanie Thierry as Duras. In 1944, Duras was a Resistance member along with her writer husband Robert Antelme. When he is sent to the Dachau concentration camp, she becomes friendly with a French collaborator (Benoît Magimel)to get information to help her group. (Interesting fact: Duras was the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima, Mon Amour.)

A few more odds and ends…

Shirley McLane and Gina Gershon star in a modernized live action adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid co-directed by Blake Harris and Chris Bouchard. Not sure what more can be said about that.

Opening in New York at the Cinema VillageFriday before its digital release on Sept 4 is the doc Davi’s Way (2B Films) about Italian-American Robert Davi, a Frank Sinatra enthusiast and stylist who prepares to recreate Sinatra’s famous 1974 concert at Madison Square Garden.

Actor Peter Facinelli makes his directorial debut with the dark comedy Breaking & Exiting (Kali Pictures / Freestyle Digital Media), starring Milo Gibson as house thief Harry who stumbles upon (film co-writer) Jordan Hinson’s Daisy and tries to save her from herself.

Not a ton of repertory things on my radar other than a Winona Ryder retrospective at the Quad Cinema called “Utterly Winona,” including all her great movies from the ‘80s and ‘90s. I guess there’s a Truffaut retrospective at the Metrograph, but you know what I always say: Truffaut... Tru-cares? (I don’t always say that so don’t write me angry letters Truffaut-fans. I don’t mean to cause a Trufuffle for anyone.)

Last but not least, streaming giant Netflix offers the Spanish film The Motive from Manuel Martin Cuenca based on the novel by Javier Cercas, about an aspiring writer who seeks inspiration for his novel by manipulating lives.

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