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opbackgrounds · 3 years

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so I was doing some research after watching movie 6...

...and apparently it was originally written as a comedy

Yeah, I was surprised, too

Baron Omatsuri is not my favorite One Piece movie—Film Z has too many of my favorite tropes to be usurped from that position—but I do think it is the most daring. Of all the supplemental material I’ve seen and read, it feels the least...One Piece-ish.

Yes, that includes the noodle commercials.

If you haven’t seen the movie and can stomach a little spookiness, do yourself a favor and give it a watch. Unlike movies like Strong World or Z that have the look and feel of a manga arc, Movie 6 transplants the Straw Hat Pirates into a world that doesn’t feel like a One Piece story, taking risks and exploring themes that would never fit in the manga proper.

In addition to the obvious changes in art and animation style, there are supernatural elements that don’t make sense within the One Piece world. None of the Straw Hats win a fight—Luffy included, although he is heavily implied to have killed the big bad at the end. The moral of the movie, if it can be said to have a moral, is if you lose the people closest to you, the answer is to forget about them and make new friends. The story ends with many questions left unanswered and the main drama between the crew unresolved.

And, if you allow me to get philosophical for a moment, I wish there were more movies like it. As I wrote in my review of Novel A, I don’t go to supplemental material or side stories looking for a repeat of what’s in the manga. Oda has written 1000 chapters of One Piece—why not spice things up a little and try something different for a change?

I know the answer isn’t that simple, and by their very nature not all risks will pan out. There will be people who don’t like this movie because it’s different, both in look and tone. But there’s something to be said about a creator putting their heart and soul into a work and having it show in the final product.

Which brings us back to the original premise. How does a movie go from a light-hearted comedy based on a variety show theme to...this

Baron Omatsuri was directed by Mamoru Hosoda and came out in 2005. To put that into perspective, the movie was in production when the Luffy vs Usopp fight was first seen in the manga. Manga!Luffy had not yet faced the challenge of an inter-crew disputes when the story was being written and boarded, nor did the creative team have the events of Sabaody and Marineford to see how Luffy would react to the loss of his loved ones. They were working without a full understanding of Luffy’s character, and to a lessor extent the character of the Straw Hat Pirates, and it seems like Oda was much less involved In production than has been in movies since Strong World and beyond.

Likewise, Hosoda had just left a tumultuous situation at Studio Ghibli while working on Howl’s Moving Castle, and if this interview is anything to go by (https://instrangeaeonsblog.wordpress.com/2016/04/24/mamoru-hosoda-on-omatsuri-danshaku-animestyle-interview-part-1/) was going through a lot of personal shit when he was brought on as director. The script he was given was originally written like a variety show—something that was carried over into the various trials seen in the final movie—and meant to be a lighthearted affair after the relatively serious Movie 5 (which I have not seen am thus unable to compare tone).

With that backstory in mind, it’s easy to see how the bickering and backbiting between the Straw Hats early in the movie is a metaphor for Hosoda’s time at Ghibli, which is something he admits to in the interview. Movie 6 feels different than any other One Piece movie because it’s the project of a man who has had to endure the loss of those who he was close with, at least in a professional capacity.

There are moments in Movie 6 where Luffy doesn’t feel like Luffy. More than once a member of the Straw Hats ask him to intervene during arguments, moments Luffy either ignores or doesn’t notice. It’s a version of Water 7 where instead of fighting Usopp, Luffy ignores the underlying differences within his crew, and as a result loses everybody.

The structure of the three trials follows a clear path of deterioration within the crew, the initial goldfish scooping game showing the Straw Hats at their best and inciting the jealousy of the Baron, the ring toss sowing discord among the crew even as they snatch a narrow victory, only for them to be utterly crushed in the third and final challenge as they’re unable help one another survive.

It is somewhat implied that the Breaking of the Fellowship(TM) is magical in nature—that like the One Ring, the Lily Carnation was able to influence the Straw Hat’s thoughts and actions, but this is never stated outright and I prefer the more mundane interpretation: That without strong leadership the Straw Hats fell victim to the manipulative machinations of the Baron, and simply self-destructed as a result. In the end, it’s up to the interpretation of the viewer.

And speaking of things up to interpretation, I love how the Lily Carnation isn’t explained in the slightest. The plant that initially absorbs the Straw Hats looks more like the stem of a devil fruit than a flower, it for some reason rings like a gong when hit, and somehow is able to turn pieces of itself into facsimile of the Baron’s old crew who can somehow move around despite being plans. It’s weird, it’s wonderful, and the element of the unknown works so well in the horror-lite setting.

My personal theory is the island somehow managed to eat a devil fruit which manifests itself as the Lily Carnation (which due to the L/R conflation in Japanese, is pronounced ‘reincarnation’, which I think is a nice touch of foreshadowing that may or may not have been intentional).

(Also, I can’t decide if little chewing animation it makes when it’s eating people or the weird bullseyes it makes when shit gets real are the most terrifying thing in the movie.)

Hmmm, tasty.

Anyway, this is getting long, so here are some final thoughts:

1) This movie has some low key fantastic outfits. The Straw Hats all look very cool without being over designed like a lot of recent movies. Big hat Robin is of course a fave, and makes me really want to see her in a Carmen Sandiego getup.

2) Screenshots do not do the animation of the movie justice. It’s very fluid and has a lot of excellent expressions/poses, although I admit the 3D is jarring at times. Do not let the art put you off if you haven’t seen it

3) Also, I don’t think there’s any shading? Like at all? The movie does a lot of cool stuff with color instead. For example, the scene where Luffy initially loses to the Baron his skin goes all grey, and I thought it was because he was fighting at night, but it stays grey even in the better lighting of the underground tunnels and stays that way until he finds out the Straw Hats are still alive, where it returns to his normal color

4) There’s an extended Benny Hill-type gag when Luffy first chases after the little mustache pirate that’s perfectly timed to the music, and ends when Luffy just uses his power to grab him. The comedic timing is amazing and it’s probably my favorite funny moment in the movie, of which there are several despite the overall darker tone

5) The extended jungle shot from Nami’s POV? Very cool

6) I love how from the earliest scenes nothing is as it seems. The opening text is Robin reading the map, but the storm that’s seen on screen is the one that sank the Baron’s crew. Likewise the whole fancy city is shown to be fake panels early on, the goldfish catching game is a trap, etc., etc. It does a good job clueing the viewer in early that’s something’s very wrong on the island, even if they don’t realize it at first

7) I don’t think this type of movie would work in modern One Piece without somehow nerfing Luffy. Horror works best when the protagonist is weak and vulnerable, and that fits best with a pre-Gear 2/3 Luffy (same with the rest of the crew, tbh. I was waiting for Nami to use her lightning stick during the games, forgetting it hadn’t been boosted yet).

8) I like how there are four captains on the island representing different levels of loss—the Baron has lost his crew and wants to destroy all others because of it, mustache pirate lost his crew and is willing to put it behind him to make new friends, Luffy has freshly lost his crew and hasn’t decided what path he will go, and coward dad hasn’t lost his crew yet but is at risk if he doesn’t change his cowardly ways

9) I think the reason why Chopper was the first Straw Hat to disappear is he’s the most likely to play the part of peacemaker. He’s also the only crew member needing rescuing at the end of the goldfish scoop game, when Luffy foolishly puts his life at risk trying to save him from drowning, just like he recklessly charges the Baron at the end of the movie. Except that time there was no Sanji to save him, leaving Luffy to get his ass thoroughly kicked

10) This is a very good Halloween movie, and I’m glad I watched it in October

#opbackgrounds #long post #movie 6 #review #one piece #Baron Omatsuri

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tobesobri · 4 years

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𝒯hank you for all the love on the first chapter, that was honestly the last thing I expected, and it really does mean the world to me that you guys like this story. I’m going to include the taglist at the end, but if you’d like to be added for future updates, go here and put in your tumblr URL. Okay, anyways, this chapter is very like,,, rocky and emotional so! Have fun reading :)

huge massive thank you to the incredible @youresogolden-h for editing ❤️

Chapter Two: Do It One More Time (3.8k)

Harry and Y/N are friends…. with benefits, but not the kinds you’re thinking of.

🥥MASTERLIST 🌃INSPO TAG 🌻ASK TAG 💃PLAYLIST 🛌

Sneaking Harry out had been the least of her worries. Him being on her mind constantly was a much bigger cause for concern. She had trouble sleeping at night, tossing and turning and even having to wash her entire bedspread to get rid of his scent. It had been no use, however. It was like her body got a taste of something very potent and wanted it now more than ever before.

And it didn’t take long for her to get back into her routine. To soil the pillowcases in her tears because the emptiness inside her chest had only grown tenfold after what had happened with Harry. Her muscles literally ached and her sobs almost sent her to the bathroom to hurl up an empty stomach full of knots.

Her brain had finally gotten a reprieve from its loneliness. She finally felt what it was like to have someone, even if it wasn’t real. Even if it was a mistake and even if it was fleeting. Harry had filled whatever missing parts were within her and it hurt like hell to go back to normal again.

But she wasn’t the only one. He couldn’t sleep anymore either. His house felt massive and the silence between all the walls seemed to ring just a little bit louder. He found himself buying an unnecessary amount of pillows and setting them all up on his bed just to surround himself with something. He’d been here before though. After a breakup, his least favorite part was going back to sleeping alone. He hated not having someone to hold onto. It took him weeks to get used to it last time, and to get used to the cold spots on the other side of the bed. It only took four and a half hours with Y/N to fuck him all up again.

And he really shouldn’t be doing this, but he was desperate.

“Hello?” Even her voice was a breath of fresh air for him.

“Hey, it’s uh… Harry.”

“Oh. I didn’t know you had my number.”

“Will gave it to me a while ago… for emergencies.”

Y/N took a long pause, unsure why Harry was calling her on a Thursday afternoon, completely at random. It had been almost an entire week since their… incident. Why was he calling her right now?

“So… is this an emergency?”

“Um… well, no. It isn’t.”

“So why are you calling then?”

“I was wondering um… you can say no but um… I was wondering if you wanted to… sleep with me again.” He cringed at his last few words and the way they felt like knives cutting his throat to get out. He had no better way to phrase what he wanted other than being blunt about it and admitting he wanted her up against him. He wanted more than just lifeless pillows to cuddle up to at night.

And something about Y/N had him losing his fucking mind the past week so asking her to sleep with him seemed low on his list of crazy.

“Sorry?”

“I mean… like we did last week. I was wondering if you wanted to come over tonight, just to sleep?”

“Why?” She asked, unsure why Harry fucking Styles was asking her that. Sure, they were somewhat friendly and she had thoughts about asking him the same exact thing, but it was an odd request coming from him. She was sure if he needed a cuddle buddy that he could easily find anyone else.

But even the thought of him being like that with someone else gave her a horribly sick feeling in her stomach that she recognized immediately but could not for the life of her explain. She didn’t get jealous, ever.

He cleared his throat, “Um well… I have had a pretty hard time sleeping and then last Friday it was like… like the best sleep of my life. And this past week has been awful again. So I was just… we don’t have to if you don’t want to though. It’s fine. I probably shouldn’t have even called…”

“No.” She cut his spiraling off abruptly. “I mean… yes. I… can do that.”

He immediately let out a huge breath of air in relief but also couldn’t believe she had, yet again, agreed to another one of his stupid ideas. “I just want to let you know I’m not trying to like… get in your pants or anything. I genuinely just…” He stopped then, knowing a more believable story would be him wanting to get into her pants than what was actually going on with him.

“Just what?”

“I just need someone.” He admitted with his eyes closed tight as he laid back onto his couch. “And it’s not very easy asking people to just sleep with you.”

She let another moment of silence go by that just about tore him up. And right when he was about to ask if she was still there, he heard her voice again, as softly as ever.

“What time should I come over then?”

Harry’s house wasn’t easy to access. First, there was the entrance gate to just get into the neighborhood, which had an intimidatingly large security guard posted out front like an oversized bridge troll. Then she had to hand over her driver’s license and try to convince him she was there to see Harry, and that her name was supposed to be on his list of accepted guests. The whole thing wouldn’t seem so unbelievable to her if she wasn’t already trapped in a pit of nerves from being there in the first place.

By some miracle, however, the guard returned her ID along with a visitor’s pass and opened the gates for her.

Then, of course, there was finding his house, which turned out to be a whole other task and a half on its own. Every house was so far from the main road due to oversized front lawns that she couldn’t read anyone’s house number unless she practically trespassed. He’d given her very vague instructions so she mostly had to rely on Google Maps. Which somehow got her to the house at the end of Spruce Street with the enormous pine tall trees and rose bushes surrounding it just like Harry had described.

She pulled into the short gap of driveway just before the tall, wooden privacy gates that hid most of his house from view. After rolling down her driver’s side window, she inputted the four-digit code he’d given her onto the pinpad. Within a few seconds the gates opened, and after a moment to ogle at his insanely beautiful house, she swallowed the pit in her throat and carefully drove onto his property as if it was made out of glass. She really did not belong there, not in her beat up 2005 Toyota, and she couldn’t afford to break anything.

The moon was already prominent in the middle of the sky by the time she got to his front door and rang the bell. His house wasn’t at all what she expected. It was old-looking. Almost cottage-like with stone bricks and vines trickling down the architecture. She expected the most modern amenities known to man from him, but it turned out to be the polar opposite.

She stopped staring at his garden fortress of a house, with her jaw hung wide, when his door swung open. Because finally he was there, right in front of her, giving her proof that she didn’t accidentally show up at the wrong address, even though the code had worked and the house was as he described. Her anxiety was just a little extra prominent than normal.

“This is where you live?” She asked, before he even got the chance to invite her in.

He laughed, holding the door in one hand and gripping the frame with the other to keep his balance as he stood in the middle.

“Um,” he sighed, glancing up at the house, “yeah, but I’m trying to sell it soon. I bought it when I was young and impulsive.”

“Oh.” Was all she said, and he worried for a moment that he had completely lost her. That she was going to go back to never speaking a single word to him ever again. That he wasn’t anything like what she expected and it was a little too much for her to take in.

Just like most of his previous attempts at friendships, once they got even the tiniest glimpse into his life, they either bolted or stuck around long enough to get what they wanted from him.

Instead, she met his eyes again and smiled, “Can I come in or what?”

The inside of his house, however, had been recently modernized and she wondered if Harry had made all the design decisions himself. Like if he picked out the big geometric crystal chandelier in the foyer or the white marble countertops in the kitchen. She liked it, though, it was open with tall ceilings and unlike any home she’d ever stepped foot in. Even though it reminded her what vastly different worlds she and Harry came from, she knew his personality didn’t match up to his big fancy house.

When they settled into the kitchen, and when Harry began pouring two glasses of water for them, she set her things down on his island counter to give her shoulders a break from her heavy backpack. She knew she’d packed too much stuff, but if she was spending the night at Harry’s place, she needed her own familiar things to keep her company.

“I was thinking…” she started, watching as he kicked the refrigerator door shut once he’d put the filtered water pitcher back on the top shelf and handed her one of the glasses. “That maybe it’s a good idea to not tell Will… or... anyone about this.”

He thought it over for a moment and then nodded in agreement, “Yeah, okay.” Averting his eyes, his mind thought of a million different things at once while he sipped on his own glass of water until another tangible question popped into his head. “So if we’re not telling them, then where do they think you are right now?”

“At a coworker’s place.”

He nodded again and for the first time around Harry, she felt so incredibly nervous. He’d made her nervous before but not like this. She’d always just avoided him and it worked her anxieties out, but there was absolutely no chance of avoiding him now. Maybe she should have just said no, but that also seemed like an implausible choice.

“Is it alright if I like… get ready for bed? I just got off work.”

He let out a small giggle around the brim of his glass and nodded, “Yeah, I’ll show you my room.”

And his bedroom did not, by any means, disappoint. Just the square footage of it was impressive, but her eyes were particularly drawn to his bed, and not for any other reason than the way it faced massive ceiling-to-floor windows that overlooked, as it seemed, the entirety of Hollywood; and she fell in love instantly. It was mesmerizing, and she could not fathom why on earth he planned on selling. Hell if he didn’t want the house anymore, she’d take it.

“Bathroom’s over there. Make yourself at home. I’m gonna set the alarm and turn off the lights. I’ll be back in a bit.”

Nodding, she waited for him to leave before she fully lost her mind about everything. Not only was she in the nicest house she’d ever laid foot in, but she was also about to crawl back into bed with him. His king sized, fluffy-looking bed she could imagine herself getting lost in.

She knew what they were doing was slightly out of the norm for people their own age. Most people didn’t sleep in the same bed as their friends unless they were doing something friends probably shouldn’t be doing. But the benefits of their budding friendship were a little more innocent than that to the point where even the thought of Will finding out where she was right now, while she slipped into her strawberry patterned pajama pants in Harry’s ensuite, made her lightheaded. She’d almost feel better if Will found out they were actually hooking up instead, because at least that wasn’t so… weird.

With the amount of time she spent getting herself ready, most of it being wasted on psyching herself up enough to go through with all of this, she’d become very familiar with his bathroom. He had two sinks along one wall, and massive mirrors that all faced a shower that could fit an entire army inside. The tiles were either black or white except for the blue pops of color here and there. The best part of it was the massive soaker tub in the back underneath a window that overlooked his garden. It was like he plucked a bathroom straight out of Good Housekeeping.

And of course she couldn’t let his things go unnoticed. She’d make herself a space at the empty sink nearest the door, the one that didn’t have his stuff neatly stacked around it. She eyed his small selection of colognes on a tray between the sinks while she washed her face, and couldn’t help her curiosity from checking out what brand of toothpaste he used when she started brushing her own teeth.

Other than the little touches of Harry scattered sparingly about, however, it was almost as if no one lived there at all. And she became very familiar with how cold it all was.

It wasn’t until she turned the sink off after splashing her face, again, with ice cold water, that she heard the soft hum of a guitar from just outside the bathroom door. She wasn’t sure if he was playing, or if he had turned music on. She wasn’t even sure if Harry Styles knew how to play the guitar. She couldn’t ever remember him playing any instruments whenever he came over to work with Will, but maybe she was just tragically unobservant.

And that seemed to be the case once she finished up and went back out to find him perched on what appeared to be his side of the bed with his guitar on his lap and a leather bound notebook open in front of him.

Though before she could make out a single melody, he immediately stopped playing the second she re-entered the room.

“Sorry, you can keep… doing what you’re doing.”

He let out an exasperated laugh while she crept towards the bed on the opposite side and made note of the way he quickly hid his journal from her and stashed it into a drawer at his bedside table. Maybe she was overanalyzing things, but it seemed like whatever he was writing down was for his eyes only, and she respected that.

“I was trying to write a song… hasn’t really been working out for me recently.” He leaned away from her to put his guitar down on the floor, setting it upright against the table, and she hated the way her eyes went straight to the small sliver of skin under his shirt that was exposed when he did so.

“Writer’s block?” She asked, slowly making her way up under the covers next to him, still feeling like she didn’t belong even though this had all been Harry’s idea to begin with. He needed someone and so did she, even if he didn’t fully know to what extent. But it felt like somehow she had tricked him into thinking the someone he needed was her.

“Sucks,” he mumbled to himself mostly, still very obviously in his own little work bubble.

“I usually just try to stop doing whatever I’m struggling with, and do something else, something I wouldn’t normally do.”

“You mean with your art stuff?” He asked and she wasn’t sure how he knew about her hobby, if Will had brought it up before, but it made her heart flutter nonetheless, that he remembered that small detail about her.

“Yeah.” She finally looked over at him, only to find him already staring at her and it weirdly made her less anxious about her current position. In his bed. In her roommate’s best friend’s bed. “If you’re stuck, you should leave it alone and write something completely out of your comfort zone. Then when you go back to where the problem was, you have a new set of eyes on it.”

He was quiet, first just listening to her speak, and then really letting her advice sink in because it wasn’t something he’d ever thought about doing, but he made mental plans to give it a try.

“I’m sorry if this is really weird, Y/N,” he began, getting her attention when he changed the subject. “I know it’s hard to believe but I’m actually horrendously alone and I guess when we slept together I didn’t feel so much that way anymore.”

“I get it, Harry.” She sighed, never wanting to fully open up to him, but feeling like it was now or never to get him to stop making it more weird by apologizing. “Makes you feel like… empty.”

“Exactly,” Harry sighed and she glanced at him when he agreed so enthusiastically. “I haven’t been that close to someone in… months,” he rolled his eyes down to meet hers again, “and I guess I just didn’t want it to be like that again.”

The look on her face alone made it easy to tell everything he said resonated with her, like he was saying exactly what she was thinking too. It broke his heart to know that she, in any way, felt like he did, but it also made him glad someone finally understood what he was going through, even if in just the slightest.

“I understand, Harry. I guess I just don’t understand why you’re alone. Can’t you have anyone you want?”

He scrunched up his face, “It’s not that easy.” He huffed, “People aren’t all that interested in me as they are getting loads of likes on Instagram and having lots of money. I mean… I haven’t had a single relationship that didn’t end the same.”

“Still,” she mumbled begrudgingly. He was still Harry Styles. People still wanted him and, even if it hadn’t turned out so well, he’d still been not alone at some point in his life, unlike her.

He raised his eyebrows, a little irritated at this point. “Okay then, why are you alone? Can’t imagine it’s that hard for you.”

She rolled her eyes away from him and hung her head to disguise the embarrassment on her face. There were two big reasons why she was alone, and she was not about to admit them to Harry at eleven o’clock on a Thursday night.

“So what is it then?” He talked for her when he grew irritated with her silence and her inability to see his perspective on things, “Your lack of ability to talk to people? Because you have these massive walls to keep literally everyone out, including me, for the past however many months we’ve known each other?”

She shook her head and sunk deeper and deeper inside herself. This was all a mistake. It had all gone wrong because she opened her mouth and said something insensitive.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Harry.” She looked at him again finally, holding back the stupid tears trying to well up just from the mere thought of being even moderately yelled at, and especially by Harry who she’d never imagined being angry a day in his life. “But if we’re just going to sit here judge each other, I think I should go.”

“No.” He immediately reached across the king-sized space between them to grab her arm before she even considered leaving his bed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell like that.” They stared at each other silently for a moment before he continued, “You don’t want to talk about it and that’s fine.”

She stared at him for a moment, and then at his hand around her arm and just how good it felt to be touched. Just to have human contact, even just something as simple as that. And then she felt just as desperate as she had when she agreed to all of this in the first place.

“Can we just go to sleep? I’m tired.”

It started out like it had before. A gap of space between them after Harry had turned out the lamp beside him. After he spent an ungodly amount of time staring out his window and listening to her breathing, and she spent the same amount of time overthinking, they both realized something wasn’t working.

“Harry?” She whispered like she was throwing out a line into a vast ocean.

“Hmm?”

“You were right… about why I’m alone. But… it’s also that no one’s ever really shown any interest in me because, um... ” she struggled, trying her damndest not to cry in front of Harry. “I’m... ugly, you know… so that’s, um...” Her voice was just a whisper she could barely even make out, but it was still the first time she’d said that to anyone before. Sure, she wasn’t facing Harry when she said it and they were in complete darkness, but it was still hard, hard enough to make her hands shake and the tears fall.

He knew it too, the way her voice wavered like he’d never heard before. He twisted his head over his shoulder to look at her, eyebrows furrowed even deeper when he saw the shadow of her hand move across her face to wipe the tears away.

And here she was; in Harry’s bed where she thought her problems would be temporarily solved, and yet she was still crying.

“So that’s why… I feel like I don’t let people in because I don’t want anyone to have to be stuck with me.” She finished and he flipped himself onto his back, still staring at her head like he couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth, that she even thought that way about herself. He was sitting there in shock because, well… he had been wrong. He didn’t understand her at all.

Without a single clue how to respond without sounding like a disingenuous asshole, he went another route rather than opening his mouth to give her unsolicited advice.

“Come ’ere.” He whispered, helping her until she was in his arms again just like before. He cradled the back of her head with one hand as she hid her face on his chest and wrapped his free arm around her shoulders. Slowly, she warmed up to him and tucked her own arm around his side as they fit themselves together like puzzle pieces all over again. Except this time, they were both consciously aware of it.

They stayed like that for a while until Harry listened to her breathing even out, and he could hardly keep his eyes open any longer. He still wanted to say a million different things, but knew it might only make it worse because his head wasn’t clear enough to say the right things. So, he just held on tight and waited for morning.

taglist: @afterstylesmadeit @cxnyon-moon @and-im-not-okay-with-it @chrryblsms @whydontharry @harryinsweatersandbandanas @idkthisisjustforfanfic @teddysoldbird @shawnsblue @thurhomish @theasstour @hufflepuff-always-and-forever @staceystoleyourheart @granolagrannie @defineharry @iambabyharry @1142590m @ashtondene @smokeinherperfume @cherryyharryy

#harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles writing #onlyhuman

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gifted-burnout-archive · 4 years

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Jim’s Best Friend

Part Four - An Honest Discussion

Word Count: 2147

Author’s Note: I’ve already written so much for this fic, I cannot wait to share! I hope you all like the writing, I realise it sort of changes POVs a little when I write. But yeah, anyway!

WARNING: Domestic Violence and Abuse

October, 2005.

"It's so obvious I just..." Meredith let out a chuckle at the table as you walked in. Her, Kelly and Phyllis were on break discussing something, and you sat down with the trio.

"What is?" You asked, and Kelly giggled.

"That Jim has the hots for Pam." She said quietly, the other women laughing a little. You raised an eyebrow.

"He... He does?" You say, and Meredith tutted affectionately at you.

"You are so caught up in that more-than-friendship you don't even notice anymore Y/N." She explained, and you nodded, standing up from the table and making yourself a coffee, thinking it over.

You supposed it made sense: the pair of them were constantly chatting, maybe even flirting, around the office. They got on like a house on fire.

"Oh God... Have I been third wheeling them all this time?" You thought aloud, and turned to your colleagues.

"Goodness no Y/N... Well, maybe..." Phyllis tried to comfort you, when another person coughed, and the four of you looked over to Angela, who stood in the doorway. She closed the door, taking a seat beside Kelly.

"Not to be the bitch, but it's really clear that in your friendship bundle, Pam is the girl Jim loves, and you're the one he keeps spare." She said blandly, and the others looked at her with glares. "It's true! Y/N, you are great, don't get me wrong, but Jim has to chase Pam. She's with someone else, winning her heart is like winning the lottery, and you are, on all spectrums, just less appealing. You relationship is in shambles, you are more plain than Pam, you weigh more, you talk more..."

"Jim is with someone." You announced, trying to change the topic. You coughed and ran a hand through your hair. "Uh, yeah... Remember the lady who came in and sold bags? Katy? Yeah, he's bringing her along to our big date night..." you said, and Angela scoffed.

"With Katy and Pam there, you better hold on tight to Brian..." she warned you, walking past and back into the office. You shared a look with the three ladies, and smiled softly, before heading back to your desk.

—

"Pam, am I plain?" You asked after work. You had known Roy longer than Pam, the pair of you had been friendly when you interned downstairs, and since you were so close to Pam, it was normal for you to get ready at hers. Whether it was a girls night out, or double dates, or in this case a triple date, Pam and Roy's place was where you always got ready.You asked the question as you fixed your heels on, your hair curled and resting on your shoulders in beach waves, the sea blue dress Pam had picked out for you complimenting your skin tone.

"How can you say that when you look like a goddess right now?" Pam asked with a laugh, finishing off her own makeup. She had chosen a pretty blouse and skirt combo, and looked stunning, as always.

"You're just being nice... Angela said I was plain today in the kitchen, I just can't stop thinking about it." You sighed. You never thought you were a model or anything, but plain was such a neutral way to describe someone, and it kind of hurt.

"Angela's a prude and a hag who thinks that she is God's chosen angel." Pam tried to comfort you, and you smiled for appearances. She wasn't one to talk down someone, even if it was Angela. "Have you talked to Michael yet?" She changed the subject, and you shook your head.

"No... I've managed to avoid talking with him for six weeks now, and I will continue to do so until he talks to me." You decided, applying your final touches of lipstick and mascara.

"Silent treatment, I like it." Pam giggles, and she pulled you both together to look in her full length mirror.

"The boys won't be able to look away." She posed, and nudged you to do the same, causing you both to smile. As a pair, you headed into the living room, where Roy and Brian were waiting, chatting over a few beers.

"There you guys are. Come on, we're gonna be late!" Brian said as you both entered the room. Roy got us and whispered into Pam's ear, making her blush, and you looked up at Brian as he came over.

"You look great tonight honey." You said, taking his hand, but instead of stopping, Brian grabbed your hand and marched you both out to the car. Roy and Pam followed. Roy went for the driver's seat, but you stepped in. "Designated driver, my man." You said, and he tossed you the keys, he and Pam getting in the back. You watched Brian walk past the passenger seat and get in the back with them, but didn't say a word, reversing out of the parking spot and driving down the road towards the restaurant.

Pam had picked it, since she knew everyone so well, and had even made sure there was at least one meal everyone would enjoy. She had even researched through Jim what Katy would like, and made her decisions accordingly. So driving there, through the sudden rain, while your boyfriend, best friend and best friend's boyfriend sat in the backseat and sang along to the radio, you hoped it would be a good night. Pam had planned it out, and all you five had to do was execute it so that no-one went home hating anyone else.

You arrived at the restaurant five minutes late due to the rain, and parked up as close as you could get to the entrance. As Roy helped Pam out, holding his jacket over both of their heads to get themselves in untouched by rain, Brian ran ahead while you straightened out the car. You hadn't brought an umbrella, like an idiot, and your 'jacket' was a silver shawl.

So, you waited a second, bracing for the cold and the wet, and when the downpour eased up slightly, you ran as fast as you could into the restaurant, surprised you had managed to keep your makeup intact as you got inside, through your hair was now slightly damper, and your dress a deeper shade of blue. You nodded to the server at reception and walked into the main body of the restaurant, Pam waving you over from a secluded back table.

Jim and Katy has already arrived and ordered drinks for everyone, and you sat you bag and shawl on your chair before greeting them.

"We haven't met yet. I'm Y/N, I work with Jim in sales." You introduced yourself to Katy, who got up and pulled you into a tight hug, and you squeezed her back.

"You look great tonight, Y/L/N. New dress?" Jim asked as you gave him a quick hug. You smiled and nodded, sitting yourself beside Brian and Pam at the circular table, and smiling as you saw what Jim had ordered you.

"Thanks Jim..." You smiled at him, and the table slowly laughed at what you were drinking. Grape soda, Jim's favourite, a label stuck to your glass reading "fake wine".

"Designated driver." He shrugged, and the tables clinked glasses, beginning to look over the menu and discuss food options. It was Italian, the universal cuisine to fit all taste palettes. As the server came over, you glanced over the menu once again, finally deciding on a pasta dish.

"Oh, could I get the tomato pasta with chicken? And the pepperoni pizza for you, babe?" Pam ordered for her and Roy, who nodded with a grin. Jim followed suit, ordering the veal for Katy and another pasta dish for himself. As you opened your mouth to speak, Brian talked over you.

"The steak for me, gnocchi on the side, and the house salad for my girl." Brian smiled, settling his arm around the back of your chair.

"Sir we only do the house salad as a starter." The waiter interjected, but Brian nodded.

"Just bring it with the mains." He asked, the server disappearing. Pam gave your leg a squeeze under the table, and Roy struck up the conversation.

"So, Brian, how did you and Y/N meet?" He asked, and you glanced over at your boyfriend, along with four other sets of eyes. You didn't really discuss your relationship at work, it never really came up. For Pam and Jim though, it was a constant. The office knew Katy, and Roy worked downstairs.

"Well, it was, like, ten months ago now? I was at a party, old friend from college, and all of a sudden I hear this shout. This cheer, and I turn around, and there's Y/N, doing amazing at beer pong, and completely ruining my old pals on the table." Brian explained, and you smiled, pressing a kiss to his cheek and nodding along. Jim looked a little confused for a moment, but continued to listen, not voicing his puzzlement, even though it was fair.

What little your work friends knew about Brian was that you met at baseball game. You kept the ball he caught for you on your desk.

And, whoever Brian was talking about, it wasn't you.

—

"Tonight went well, don't you think?" Brian said as you got into your apartment, having dropped off Roy, Pam, Jim and Katy at their own homes. You locked the door behind you, dropping your house keys in the bowl, and you walked straight to the bathroom, tying back your hair and washing away the makeup you had so perfectly applied.

"You didn't tell me you have hot friends babe. I mean, wow. Those guys got lucky." Brian said from the kitchen, opening the fridge and pulling out a beer. You patted your face dry before heading through to the living area, leaning against the wall.

"Brian..."

"I mean, no offence, but I really pulled the short straw, huh?" He said, only half-joking, taking a gulp of beer.

"Brian."

"What?" He looked over.

"We met at a baseball game." You finally said, and Brian's smile flipped quickly.

"Yeah, so?"

"You told everyone we met at a party... But the thing is, I haven't met any of your old college friends yet." You spoke slowly, and Brian started walking towards you.

"Get to your point, Y/N." He said coldly, taking another drink. He had already had several glasses of wine at the resaurant.

"How long have you been seeing her?" You asked, and within an instant, he lost it. It was like waiting for bomb to explode.

"REALLY?! DOING THIS NOW, AFTER SUCH A NICE NIGHT WITH YOUR FRIENDS?!" He yelled, and you backed up into a wall. He trapped you in with his arms, and you tried to keep your composure. "I can't believe you would even think I would cheat on you!" He laughed, and when you tried to push him back his hand gripped your neck, constricting around your airway.

"Brian..." you choked out, shaking, and he hit you. Just like he had in June, but harder. He meant it this time.

"Say you think I cheated, Y/N! Say it and see what happens!" He screamed, and you moved you hands up to try and alleviate pressure from your throat.

"Brian, I don't think it... I know..." you managed to cough out, and he let go of your throat. You dropped to the floor, every breath hurting as you refilled your lungs with air.

"How?"

"Girls wear perfume, Brian. And lipstick... Lipstick generally stains..." You coughed out. You had suspected it for a while. A sharp pain hit your side, causing you to fall over onto the floor.

"What are you going to do, you little bitch?" He asked, standing over you.

"Leave, or I call the police..." you said with as much conviction as you could, sitting yourself up against the wall. And, like a switch, he changed, from angry to free. He kicked you again, catching your head this time, one last time for good measure, and left the flat with a slam of the door and a beer in hand. And there, on your living room floor, in you pretty blue dress that was now bearing blood stains from a busted lip and cut above your eyebrow. Your head pounded, but after a few minutes of sitting in the silence, you pulled yourself up and stumbled back to the bathroom, trying to examine the damage.

The bright light hurt your eyes, but you could still see . Bruising cheekbone, a bloody lip, a cut brow brow, a bruise on the side of your head when you fell to the ground. You didn't even want to know what sort of bruising was occurring on your body, but you knew it would be at least January before all of this healed up.

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lucyreviewcy · 3 years

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The Three Three Musketeers (or Where The F*ck Did All The Stupid Hats Go)

I read The Three Musketeers and then I watched the 1973, 1993 and 2011 adaptations. Which one wins tho?

Adaptation is a fascinating concept, especially of texts which are frequently adapted or parodied. After I rewatched the 2005 Pride and Prejudice I was reminded how weirdly divisive the two dominant adaptations of that book are. A lot of people consider the 2005 to be an inferior betrayal of the 1990s BBC version. I actually prefer the 2005 because I think Matthew McFadyen’s Mr Darcy is a wonderfully complex character. McFadyen imbues Darcy with social awkwardness and anxiety, which Lizzie misinterprets as his pride. To overcome the “Lizzie doesn’t fancy him ‘til she sees his house” debate, director Joe Wright includes a moment where Lizzie glimpses Darcy alone with his sister. He’s comfortable, his body language is completely different, and he’s smiling broadly. That moment really sold me on the entire film because it made Darcy a full character and was a really simple addition that rounded out the story. I still like the 90s version but for me, it’s the 2005 that takes first place. (Although an honourable mention for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies because it is an excellent romp.)

Look: adaptation is always a complicated topic. You can’t untangle one adaptation from another, because it’s pretty rare that somebody adapting a classic text like Pride and Prejudice or The Three Musketeers is not already familiar with existing adaptations. The most recent adaptation of any classic text is not simply an adaptation of that text, but the next step in a flow chart that includes all the previous adaptations and the cultural context of the newly created product. These three adaptations of Dumas’ 1844 novel are all texturally and stylistically very different, and two of them diverge significantly from the original text. What I found truly fascinating was what all of them had in common, and what each new era (these were made at around 20 year intervals) decides to add or remove. What do all these movies agree are the essential parts of the story, and what are some adaptations more squeamish about including from Dumas’ original narrative?

Before we dive in, no I have not seen every single adaptation of the story, that would be a dissertation level of research and I do actually have things to do right now (although, I will admit...not many.) I’m looking at these three Hollywood adaptations because they all had star studded casts (for the era they were made in), they’re all English language, and (crucially) they were all easily available on the internet for me to stream.

What are the essential ingredients of a Three Musketeers adaptation?

Firstly, there should be at least three musketeers. Secondly, D’Artagnan (Michael York 1973, Chris O’Donnell 1993, Logan Lerman 2011) should be a young upstart who is introduced part way through a sword fight. He should also have silly hair. He is also consistently introduced to the musketeers in all three films by challenging them each individually to duels at noon, one o’clock and two o’clock.

The films all maintained some elements of the original “Queen’s Diamonds” storyline, and featured the Queen, Milady and Constance. The characterisation of these three varied a lot.

Our villains in each case are invariably the Cardinal, his pal Rochefort (who always has an eyepatch, although this trope is not in the book and is actually attributable to the way Christopher Lee is styled in the 1973 film), and Milady de Winter. Satisfyingly, at least two of the villains usually wear red because they’re bad. Red is for bad.

All three are very swashbuckling in tone, have elements of physical comedy, and two of them include one of the three valet characters Dumas wrote into the original story, Planchet (1973 Roy Kinnear, 2011 James “ugh why” Corden). They also all bear the generic markings of the movies made during the same era, our 70s D’Artagnan feels like a prototype Luke Skywalker. The 90s version features a random martial arts performer. The 2011 version has CGI and James Corden in equal measure (read: far too much of both.)

What are the big differences?

I’m going to divide this category into three main segments: character, story and style. My own three musketeers, the three musketeers of movie making.

Character

D’Artagnan

D’artagnan in the book comes across as a pretty comical figure. He’s nineteen and there’s something satisfying about how similar Dumas’ caricature of a nineteen year old is to a modern character of the same age. He’s overconfident, has a simplistic but concrete set of morals, and falls in love with every woman he sees. If D’Artagnan were a 2021 character, he’d really hate The Last Jedi, is what I’m saying. He’d definitely have a tumblr blog, probably a lot like this one, but perhaps a scooch more earnest. He really loved The Lighthouse but he can’t explain why. Isn’t it nice to know that awkward nineteen year olds have been pretty much the same for the last three hundred years at least?

In all three films he’s kind of irritating, but at least in the 1973 this feels deliberate. This version has a certain “Carry On Musketeering” quality to it and D’Artagnan is your pantomime principal, he’s extremely naïve and he takes himself very seriously. This is the closest D’Artagnan to the book, and the 1973 is, in general, the film which adheres most faithfully to that source material.

The 1993, which is (spoiler alert) my least favourite adaptation, has Chris O’Donnell as the least likeable D’Artagnan I’ve come across. I’ve only seen O’Donnell in one other thing, the Al Pacino movie Scent of a Woman. He’s bearable in that because he’s opposite Al Pacino, and so his wide-eyed innocence makes sense as a contrast to Pacino’s aged hoo-ah cynicism. Rather than being introduced in a practice sword fight with his father, as in the other two films, D’Artagnan is fighting the brother of an ex-lover. This captures the problem with the film in general: this adaptation wants D’Artagnan to be cool. He is not. The comedy of the 1973, and indeed the book, comes from D’Artagnan being deeply uncool, and from his blind idolisation of the deeply flawed Musketeers who actually are cool, but not necessarily heroic, or even good people. Their moral greyness contrasts with D’Artagnan’s defined sense of right and wrong, but he still considers them to be role models and heroes.

2011′s version also suffers from “Cool D’Artagnan” syndrome, with the added annoyance of that most Marvel of tropes: the quip. One of the real issues with this film is that the dialogue has a lot of forced quippery that doesn’t quite land, and the editing slows the pace of the entire film. D’Artagnan’s first interaction with Constance is a bad attempt at wit which Constance points out isn’t very funny. The problem is that Constance has no personality so there’s no real indication that she’s in any position to judge his level of wit. She’s just vague, blonde and there: three characteristics which describe an entire pantheon of badly written female characters throughout the ages. Cool D’Artagnan also means that Constance should be additionally cool, because in the book, Constance is older than, smarter than and over-all more in charge than D’Artagnan.

Female Characters

Let’s go into this with an open mind that understands all these films were made in the sociological context of their decade. The 1973 version would absolutely not be made in the same way now. Constance is a clumsy cartoon character who is forever falling over and accidentally sticking her breasts out. This is not the character from the books, but does at least leave an impression on the viewer one way or another.

In contrast, the 1993 has a Constance so forgettable I literally cannot picture her. I think she holds D’Artagnan’s hand at the end. That’s all I can say on the subject.

The 2011 has Gabriella Wilde in the role, and absolutely wastes her. Anyone who’s seen her in Poldark knows that she can do sharp-tongued beautiful wit-princess with ease. It’s the writing of this film that lets her down, in general, that’s the problem with it. The storyline and design are great, but the actual dialogue lacks the pace and bite that a quip-ridden star vehicle needs. This Constance is given simultaneously more and less to do than the Constance of the original book, who demonstrates at every turn the superiority of her intellect over D’Artagnan, but doesn’t get to pretend to be a Musketeer and whip her hat off to show her flowing golden hair like she does in the 2011.

The best character, for my money, in The Three Musketeers is Milady de Winter. Even Dumas got so obsessed with her that there are full chapters of the book written from pretty much her perspective. In the book, she’s described as a terrifying genius with powers of persuasion so potent that any jailor she speaks to must be instantly replaced. My favourite Milady is absolutely Faye Dunaway from 1973. She’s ferocious and beautiful and ruthless, but potentially looks even better because the portrayals in the other films are so very bad.

The 1993 version has your typical blonde 90s baddie woman (Rebecca De Mornay), she wouldn’t look out of place as a scary girlfriend in an episode of Friends or Frasier. 2011 boasts Milla Jovovich who presents us a much more physical version of the character, even doing an awkwardly shoe-horned anachronistic hall of lasers a la Entrapment except instead of lasers its really thin pieces of glass? The “yeah but it looks cool” attitude to anachronism in this film is what makes it fun, and Jovovich’s Milady isn’t awful, she’s just let down by a plot point that she shares with 1993 Milady. Both these adaptations get really hooked on the fact that Athos used to be married to Milady at one time (conveniently leaving out the less justifiable character point that Athos TRIED TO HANG HER when he found out she had been branded as a thief - doesn’t wash so well with the modern audiences, I think.) Rather than hating/fearing Milady, the two modern adaptations suggest that Athos is still in love with her and pines for her. This detracts from Athos’ character just as much as it detracts from Milady’s. Interestingly, and I don’t know where this came from (if it was in the book I definitely missed it), both films feature a confrontation between the two where Athos points a gun at Milady but she pre-empts him by throwing herself off a cliff (or in the 2011, an air-ship.) I think both these versions were concerned that Milady was an anti-feminist character because she’s so wantonly evil, but I disagree. Equality means it is absolutely possible for Milady to be thoroughly evil and hated by the musketeers just as much as they hate Rochefort and the Cardinal. If you want to sort out the gender issues with this story, round Constance out and give her proper dialogue, don’t make Milady go weak at the knees because of whiny Athos (both Athos characters are exceedingly whiny, 1973 Athos is just...mashed).

The Musketeers

These guys are pretty important to get right in a film called The Three Musketeers. They have to be flawed, funny but kind of cool. Richard Chamberlain is an absolute dish in the 1973 version, capturing all those qualities in one. Is it clear which version is my favourite yet?

Athos is played variously by a totally hammered Oliver Reed (1973), a ginger-bearded Kiefer Sutherland (1993) and a badly bewigged Matthew McFadyen (2011). They all have in common the role of being the most level-headed character, but the focus on the relationship between Athos and Milady in the 93 and 11 editions undermines this a lot. Athos should be cool and aloof, instead of mooning over Milady the entire time. The 2011 gives Athos some painfully “edgy” lines like “I believe in this (points at wine) this (flicks coin) and this (stabs coin with knife.)...” which McFadyen ( once oh so perfect as Mr Darcy) doesn’t quite pull off.

Porthos seems to be the musketeer who is the most different between interpretations. A foppish dandy in the 1973, a pirate (!?!) in the 1993, and then just...large in 2011. I think the mistake made in the 2011 is that large alone does not a personality make. There are hints at Porthos’ characterisation from the book: his dependence on rich women for money and his love of fine clothing, but these are only included as part of his introduction and never crop up again through the rest of the film. Pirate Porthos in 1993 is... you know what, fine, you guys were clearly throwing everything at the wall and seeing what stuck.

Aramis is our dishy Richard Chamberlain in 1973, followed by womanising Charlie Sheen in 1993 and then strikingly suave Luke Evans in 2011. I actually didn’t mind Luke Evans’ interpretation, his dialogue is forgettable but his sleek charm stuck in my head. For some reason, this version has Aramis working as a parking attendant for horses, it worked for me as a fun A Knight’s Tale-esque bit of anachronistic character development. Charlie Sheen has never managed to appear likable or attractive to me and so his role in the 1993 falls flat. In fact, in that edition there’s not much distinction between the musketeers as characters and they’re all just very 90s and American. As anyone who’s read this blog before will expect, I think Keanu Reeves as Aramis would have really upped this film’s game. In fact, Keanu Reeves as Aramis, Brad Pitt as Athos and Will Smith as Porthos could have been the ultimate 90s adaptation, throw in DiCaprio as D’Artagnan and Roger Allam as the Cardinal and I’m fully sold.

The King and Queen

All three films try and do the “Queen’s Diamonds” storyline, but only the 1973 actually includes the Queen’s affair with Buckingham. The queen, played by Geraldine Chaplin, is a tragic romantic figure (she doesn’t have a tonne to do besides being wistful and sighing over Lord Buckingham). The king is played as a frivolous idiot by Jean-Pierre Cassel (voice dubbed by Richard Briers). He doesn’t really think of the queen as a person, more as a possession that he doesn’t want Buckingham to have.

In the 1993 version, Buckingham doesn’t really feature, and it’s the queen’s refusal to get off with the Cardinal that prompts his fury at her. The book does touch on the Cardinal’s desire for the queen, but it’s placed front and centre in 1993. This is definitely the boobsiest version, with quite a lot of corsetry on show and a cardinal who hits on literally all the women. The king is shown as a stroppy teenage boy under the thumb of the cardinal, who just wants to ask the queen to the dance but doesn’t have the nerve. The king is, essentially, a Fall Out Boy lyric.

The 2011 also seems to be really squeamish about the idea of the queen having an extramarital affair. It paints Buckingham (played with excellent wig and aplomb by Orlando Bloom) as a stylish villain, who’s advances the queen has rejected. Like the 1993 version, the King is a feckless youth rendered speechless by the presence of his wife. Both these versions want the King and Queen to be happy together, while the 1973 doesn’t give a fuck.

The Cardinal and his Cronies

The cardinal is kind of universally an evil creepy guy. One of the characters from the 1973 version who actually left the least impression on me, played by Charlton Heston. I think he’s overshadowed in my recollection by cartoonishly evil Christopher Lee as Rochefort. Lee’s Rochefort is dark, mysterious and wonderfully bad, and so influential that all other incarnations’ design is based on him. The 1993 version had truly over the top Michael Wincott as a character I could honestly refer to as Darth Rochefort from the way he’s framed, while 2011 boasts a chronically underused Mads Mikkelsen in the role.

Cardinal-wise, 1993 was my favourite with Tim Curry in all his ecclesiastical splendour. It was disappointing that everything about this film, including the Cardinal’s sexual harassment of every single female character, really didn’t work for me. Tim Curry is a natural choice for this role and gives it his campy all.

2011 has not one but two trendy bond villain actors, with Mikkelsen working alongside Christoph Waltz who was...just kind of fine. I was really excited when he appeared but he didn’t really push the character far enough and left me cold.

Story

The story is where the different adaptations diverge most completely. 1973 follows the plot of the novel, D’Artagnan comes to Paris, befriends the Musketeers and becomes embroiled in a plot by the Cardinal to expose the Queen’s affair with Buckingham through the theft of two diamond studs. D’Artagnan, aided partially by the musketeers, must travel to London to retrieve the set of twelve studs gifted by the King to the Queen, and by the Queen to Buckingham. He does so, the plot is foiled, he’s made into a musketeer! Hurrah, tankards all round.

The 1993 version drops D’Artagnan into the story just as the Cardinal has disbanded the Musketeers. I found the plot of this one really hard to follow and I think at some point D’Artagnan ended up in the Bastille? There was this whole plot point about how Rochefort had killed D’Artagnan’s father. In the original, and in the 1973 version, D’Artagnan’s entire beef with Rochefort is rooted in a joke Rochefort makes about D’Artagnan’s horse. I guess for the producers of this one, a horse insult is not enough motivation for a lifelong grudge. That is really the problem with the entire film, it forgets that the story as told by Dumas is set in a world where men duel over such petty things as “criticising one’s horse”, “blocking one’s journey down a staircase” and “accusing one of having dropped a lady’s handkerchief.” The colour palette and styling are very 90s “fun fun fun”, but the portrayal of the cardinal and the endless angst about D’Artagnan’s father really dampen the mood.

The 2011 version, this is where the shit really hits the fan. We meet our musketeers as they collaborate with Milady to steal the blueprints for a flying ship (it’s like a piratecore zeppelin). Milady betrays them and gives the plans to Buckingham, they all become jaded and unemployed. D’Artagnan arrives on the scene (his American accent explained by the fact that he’s from a different part of France) and befriends the Musketeers. The cardinal tries to frame the queen for infidelity by having Milady steal her diamonds to hide them in Buckingham’s safe at the tower of London. Something something Constance, something something help me D’Artagnan you’re my only hope. MASSIVE AIRSHIP BATTLE. The king and queen have a dance. James Corden cracks wise.

It seems like as time has passed, producers, writers and directors have felt compelled to embellish the story. I think, specifically in the case of the two later versions, this is because they wanted the films to resemble the big successes of the period. Everybody knows no Disney hero can be in possession of both parents, so D’Artagnan is out to avenge his father like Simba or Luke Skywalker. In the 2011 version, the plot is overblown and overcomplicated in what seems like an attempt to replicate the success of both the Sherlock Holmes and Pirates of the Caribbean franchises. Remember the plot of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End? No, me neither.

Style

The style of these films grows increasingly wild along with the plots as time passes. The 1973 features a lot of slapstick comedy, some of which really made me cackle, and some of which was cringeworthily sexist (Constance’s boobs through the window of a litter.) That’s the 70s though! I love The Godfather but Diane Keaton’s character is unbelivably dull and annoying. Star Wars features a pretty good female character but she does end up in that bikini. The 70s seems to be a time of movies that were great except for their occasional headlong dive into misogyny. That doesn’t mean the entire movie is bad, it just means it’s suffering from the consequences of being made in the 70s. There were other consequences of this, I doubt many modern productions could get away with physically injuring so many of it’s cast members. From a glance down the IMDB trivia page, this film yielded a higher casualties to cast ratio than the My Chemical Romance Famous Last Words music video, and that’s a hard figure to top.

The 1993 version is a Disney feature and suffers from having a thin sheen (not Charlie in this instance) of “Disney Original Movie” pasted over every scene. It looks like The Parent Trap might be filming in the adjacent studio a lot of the time. The vibrancy of the colours makes the costumes look unrealistic, while the blandness of the female characters means this movie ends up a bit of a bland bro-fest. Also occasionally the sexual and violent moments really jar with the overall tone making it an uneven watch. One minute it’s Charlie Sheen cracking jokes about trying to get off with someone’s wife, the next minute you see Milady throw herself off a cliff and land on the rocks. Weird choices all round.

The 2011 version, as I’ve already mentioned, was trying to borrow its style from the success of Sherlock Holmes and Pirates of the Caribbean, with a little Ocean’s 11 thrown in. The soundtrack flips between not quite a Hans Zimmer score and not quite that other Hans Zimmer score, and after the success of Stardust it ends with a Take That song (for it to match up to the story it should have been Take That feat. Harry styles imho). Visually, there’s some fantastic travel by mapping going on, there’s far too much CGI (one of my friends pointed out that the canal in Venice seemed to be full of Flubber). Everyone is dressed in black leather, and there are not enough big hats at all. One of the best things about Musketeers films is that they’re an excuse for ridiculous hats, and in a film with a quite frankly insane visual style, I’m surprised the hats didn’t make it through. The cast, unfortunately, really lack chemistry which means the humorous dialogue is either stilted or James Corden, and the editing is just very strange. It’s one of those films that feels about as disjointed as an early morning dream, the one where you dream you’ve woken up, gotten dressed and fed the cat, but you actually are still in bed.

Conclusion

Adaptations focus on different things depending on the context they were created in. The 2005 Pride and Prejudice is deliberately “grittier” than its 1990s predecessor, at a stage when “grit” was everywhere (The Bourne Identity, Spooks, Constantine). The Musketeers adaptations demonstrate exactly the same thing: what people wanted in the 70s was bawdy comedy and slapstick with a likeable idiot hero, the 90s clearly called for... Charlie Sheen and bright colours, and the 2010s just want too much of everything and a soundtrack with lots of banging and crashing. The more modern adaptations simplified the female characters (although the 1973 version definitely is guilty of oversimplifying Constance) while over-complicating the plot. There’s a lot of embellishment going on in the 2011 version that suggests the film wasn’t very sure of itself, it pulls its plot punches while simultaneously blindly flailing its stylistic fists.

The film that works the best for me will always be the 1973 because it’s pretty straight down the line. Musketeers are good, Milady is evil, falling over is funny and the King’s an idiot. The later adaptations seem to be trying to fix problems with the story that the 1973 version just lets fly. The overcorrection of Milady and the under characterisation of Constance is the perfect example of this. If you want your Musketeers adaptation to be more feminist, don’t weaken Milady, strengthen Constance. Sometimes a competent female character is all that we need. A Constance who is like Florence Cassel from Death in Paradise or Ahn Young-yi from Misaeng could really pack a punch.

I adored the energy of the 2011 adaptation, I loved how madcap it was, I loved how it threw historical accuracy to the wind. I thought the king was adorable, and I really enjoyed seeing Orlando Bloom hamming it up as Buckingham. I was genuinely sad that the sequel the ending sets up for never came, because once they got out of the sticky dialogue and into the explosions, the film was great fun. It was a beautiful disaster that never quite came together, but I really enjoyed watching it. I love films that have a sense of wild chaos, some more successful examples are The Devil’s Advocate, Blow Dry and Lego Batman. I think the spirit of going all out on everything can sometimes result in the best cinematic experience, it’s just a shame the script wasn’t really up to muster for 2011 Musketeers.

I’m excited to see what the next big budget Musketeers adaptation brings, even if I’m going to have to wait another ten years to see it. I hope it’s directed by Chad Stahelski, that’d really float my boat (through the sky, like a zeppelin.)

#ThreeMusketeers #Three Musketeers #Adaptation #Movies #Film #The Three Musketeers

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365days365movies · 3 years

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January 13: House of Flying Daggers (Epilogue)

I think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has ruined me. Because this movie was great, seriously. Was it as good as CTHD?

No. No, it was not. Yeah, I liked it a lot, LOVED it even. And BOY, it had me guessing in the third act, I tell you what. But it wasn’t as good as Ang Lee’s outing in the wuxia genre, at least in my opinion.

But OK, what was actually good about it? A LOT, don’t you worry. But, let’s go through it bit-by-bit, shall we?

Review

Cast and Acting

Ah, Zhang Ziyi. The first time I saw you was in Memoirs of a Geisha, because my Mom asked me to read the book with her, and we watched the movie in theaters when it came out in 2005. As I recall, you didn’t really speak English when making that movie, but you were still awesome in it. Years later, I watched Hero, another Zhang Yimou movie, and while your part was smaller, I definitely noticed you. Then, yesterday, I watched your absolutely wonderful performance in CTHD, and wow. BLOWN away, you should’ve been nominated for an Oscar. And in this film today...you were great! Different from all three other roles I’ve seen you in, but still fantastic as Xiao Mei. Thank you, Zhang Ziyi, for being awesome. Also, apparently, you were in The Cloverfield Paradox, but that film was SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT, so I don’t remember you in it, sorry. Also, Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro, you guys were also great, seriously. 10/10, guys, 10/10.

Plot and Writing

Straightforward plot, great story, and a twist on the Liar Revealed story, by changing the Liar entirely! See, I HATE that trope, so very goddamn much. I’m sure I’ll go into it one of these days, but it’s genuinely my least favorite film trope of all time. So, when they were setting it up, I was fully prepared to rip into it in this review. Instead, I praise how they did it, because I REALLY wasn’t expecting it! Not just that, but there wasn’t any seen blowback from the revelations! THERE WERE JUST MORE REVELATIONS!!! I loved that, lemme tell you. Good job, Li Feng, Peter Wu, Wang Bin, and Zhang Yimou! Ya killed it. Well...mostly. I mean, it’s a great story...not an original one. Elements of it, yeah, for sure. But two lovers on opposite sides? Two friends brought to blows over a shared love interest? A love triangle? That’s a tale as old as time. And I didn’t remove many points for that, because...c’mon. It’s a timeless love story, I’m not a monster. But it’s still one I’ve heard before. 8/10.

Directing and Action

Here’s the thing about House of Flying Daggers. At its very sweet, nougat-y center, it’s a romance, not an action film. And that’s expressed well through the direction, and how the action is treated. Whereas in CTHD, all of the action is essentially a conversation, revealing the characters to the audience and to each other, in HoFD...they’re basically just action scenes. Sure, there are character interactions laced within many of them, but the action scenes really are just cool action scenes. Because of that the fight choreography isn’t as tight and detailed as it was in CTHD, which makes sense as they’re serving separate purposes. And yet...I still feel like they should be. I do think the film suffers for not injecting as much meaning into its action sequences, except for arguably the very first and last sequence. Well, OK, was the action still good? Oh, FUCK yeah, it was still good! Just wasn’t a 10/10 for me. How about the directing? Oh, this film is beautifully shot, there’s no problem there. It’s Zhang Yimou, he knows how to use a camera. So, overall, we’re giving this a 9/10. Great! But not perfect.

Production Design

THIS category, however, gets an absolute 10/10. No questions, no quarter. This movie is BEAUTIFUL, from color pallete to sets to outfits. ESPECIALLY once we get to the actual HoFD, and to the bamboo forest. Their outfits have essentially changed a part of my personal aesthetic, and I now covet that bright green. And understand, for two summer, I lived and worked in the woods for field work in biology I KNOW green. And yet, this is the most beautiful green I’ve seen in a while. Even CTHD didn’t have a green quite this vibrant, and that green was BEAUTIFUL, don’t get me wrong. Zhao Xiaoding (cinematography), Emi Wada (costume design), you guys RULE. 10/10.

Music and Editing

Music is awesome, too! But...I’m not buying this soundtrack. Sorry, Shigeru Umebayashi, you did an amazing job. I mean that, sincerely. BUT if isn’t standout as memorable to me as CTFD was. But despite this, its still getting high marks. As for the editing, it’s great. Sound editing actually stuck out to me this time, and the film editing itself is quite good. What about the computer effects, added in post-production? Y’know, I could say that they look artificial, but...they’re kind of supposed to, right? At least, that’s my opinion. The artificiality of the thrown knives injects some wuxia-style fantasy and mysticism into a film that, let’s be honest...doesn’t really have any of that. No magic, no mystics, no nothin’. Just the beauty of a knife as swift as the wind itself. 9/10.

And that’s a 92%!

Great movie, even though it isn’t my favorite this month. And it’s been surprisingly slept on by US audiences in recent years, even though it was fairly successful when it premiered. Deserves more attention for its beauty and spectacle. And while it’s FAR more of a romance than it is an action movie, it’s still chock-full of that sweet, sweet wuxia action and bombast. Definitely has my acclaim.

Wuxia, man. Wuxia. Let’s take a break from it, though. Y’know, I was gonna do Ip Man this month, but I’m actually going to wait until the end of the month for that one. I’ll explain why when we get there. For now, let’s take a break from the martial arts film. Time to leave Hong Kong and China, and head to a different country.

What’re you doing, United Kingdom? Got any action genres for me?

January 14: GoldenEye (1995)

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yet-another-saberface · 4 years

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Fate/ & My Anxiety

Okay, so, I kinda had a rough day today, but that rough day really made me want to write this. I’d been thinking about it for a bit, but now I’m sure that this is something I should put out there, because I’m sure at least someone out there has had a similar experience. And if I write this correctly, it should be an interesting read anyways. (Post now updated with a cut & pretty gifs and things! I tried to keep the gifs more positive to offset some of the more serious parts of what I’m discussing.) So uh... Enjoy I guess? It’s kinda what it says on the tin.

Warning for serious mentions of anxiety and stuff. But I try to keep it lighter than it could be. For anyone else that might have some anxiety problems like me, it might help you to read this, because it’s really just a discussion of some themes I’ve taken away from the series that really helped me with my own anxiety. But whether you read it or not you should probably take a sec to breathe, that never hurts.

So. I’m going to be upfront about this. I have anxiety. Not just a normal amount of stress, but actual, diagnosed anxiety. I am not medicated, but at the moment that’s mostly because my doctors think that trying medication during this whole pandemic situation wouldn’t actually let them know if it would help me in the long term. I’ve been living with anxiety for pretty much my entire life, but I just thought everyone was stressed out, and that life sucked, and that I was bad at dealing with it. But that wasn’t the case.

But one thing is going to ring true for me regardless of what the state of my anxiety is, be it in the moment or over the course of my life. And that’s that like most things, media helped me with it before I even realized what it was. As I sit around in quarantine and try to manage my fluctuating stress levels, I’ve found myself drifting back to the Fate Series, and FGO, after taking a break from them for few months, arguably even the past year.

At this point, it’s been around 3 years, maybe even 4, since I originally discovered Fate. And I’m not going to lie, I didn’t get the best possible first impression, because I started with the Deen anime from 2005. I’d seen Saber before, had no idea who she was other than some chic I vaguely looked like with a good character design and a sword, and saw her on the cover of an anime. So I watched it. I had no idea what the hell was going on, and was trying to piece everything together as I watched, but I watched to the end. And I liked it. It definitely wasn’t my favorite show. But when I heard that it was “the bad one,” and that there was more, I gladly went to go watch it.

And that might not make sense at first, but I’m emitting a huge detail. I was, and still am, a huge mythology nerd. As I was watching the original Stay Night anime, I was fascinated by the portrayals of these characters that, technically, I already knew. And I was really into the idea that there was more of that.

So later that year, I watched Fate/Zero. And I’m gonna be honest, I was too young to really appreciate everything it had to offer, and I’m planning on going back to it soon, but I loved every second of that show. When I got the chance, I binged through it, and it was heavy stuff, but I couldn’t take my eyes away from it.

And after that, I started looking up what else there was. I watched Carnival Phantasm in maybe 2 days tops and adored it. I procrastinate on watching a lot of stuff, because I found myself having less and less time to myself, but that same summer I watched Zero, I also started playing FGO. I started the game for the characters I already knew. I stayed because I found a story I was genuinely invested in on its own, and a community that was really fun to observe, if not be an active part of. I still remember sitting down on a day when I had nothing to do and finishing Okeanos all in one go. Or laying down after a long day at school and doing the same to a ReRun event. It was a great stress outlet, and I was invested.

But the more I look back on all of that, I start to see details that explain even better why I was so invested. I don’t have a single favorite Fate character, but I will admit that I adore Saber. She’s what drew me in, my friends who know Fate apparently think I look like her, and we all know the Excalibur scene from Zero looks like it should be in an actual movie.

I won’t claim to be a character expert, despite being a writer. I didn’t write Saber, let alone any other Fate character. But the more I think about her, the more I start to realize that yeah, I understand a lot of what she’s gone through. Do I know what it’s like to be a King and run a country and what that entails? No obviously not. But I do know what it’s like to feel that you have a duty to everyone around you to not screw things up. I understand how someone could feel extremely guilty when they do eventually screw things up. There’s a lot of ways to look at any character, but I realize now that from the beginning that that specific idea was the lens through which I understood Saber.

And it holds true for most other characters. With Shirou, did I understand losing your parental figure or an undying desire to be a hero? Not really. But I did understand the fact that he felt like he wasn’t good enough, and that he gained value by putting himself on the line for others. I may not have risked my life for another person, but I’ve definitely put myself through mental stress enough to induce multiple panic attacks a day for other people.

And now we get to the part of this... I don’t want to call it an essay. The part of this post. Where I talk about Gil.

Am I aware that in most (early) depictions of him in Fate, he’s a horrible dick of a person who deserves no respect? Yes, I am.

But I also know that when I think about some of the less horrible aspects of him as a character now, there’s stuff in there I should take away that is good. I just went on an whole rant about how I can understand low self esteem and self sacrifice and crushing responsibility and the pressure to not screw it all up. And these days, I can’t stop thinking about how Saber admitted to a lot of that and (this is obviously a gross oversimplification but you should get by now that this is personal and specific) the response from Gil and Rider was “It sounds like you aren’t living life as happily as you could and are setting a bad example of how to live life for those that look up to you.” And that idea keeps coming back to me in every moment when I’m having an anxiety attack, or cram studying even though I know I’m ready, or finishing something due two weeks from now tonight because I won’t have to do it later. And it only hits me harder because I know I’m not a King or anything lofty like that, but I am a labeled “gifted student” and a support person for many of my friends and a designated “responsible one” and all of these other things. And yet I’m preaching for them to do as I say not as I do when it comes to enjoying life and taking care of yourself.

I don’t know if I fully internalized that message when I first watched that scene. But I must have in some capacity because it still haunts me now, reminding me that maybe I shouldn’t be giving into all of this stress. And I’m trying, I really am, to keep that in mind as I fight against all of it and try to keep things under control.

And then there’s Babylonia. When I really get down to it, I have a pretty strong emotional connection to this part of FGO. I joined the game pretty late, roughly right after Camelot’s release, so I had a lot of catching up to do. But I caught up, and I got to experience this story that I’d heard was one of the best in the game as it came out. If I wanted to I could say a LOT more about Babylonia, and maybe I will in the future.

But I’m not going to deny that CasGil has been a pretty prominent presence in my mind ever since when it comes to stress and responsibility. (Heck I could probably talk about just him specifically for at least a good 5th of what I have so say about Babylonia. Maybe I will someday.) I mean, it’s kind of his thing, you see the fandom joke about it all the time how he’s the Gil that doesn’t sleep because he just keeps on working and working and working. And that’s why there was this one moment when I was watching the Babylonia anime that now stands out to me. When Gil goes with the player out to the observatory, he just leaves. He doesn’t bother apologizing to anyone or explaining his actions, he just goes. And we know, as basically an outsider, that this is him taking a break. He needed a break and so he just took a break without any clarifications or explanations or apologies. Sure he might justify it to the player has needing to do some other work out there, but that actually makes it hit harder for me. Because he’s justifying his breaks as more work.

I used to be lucky enough to have a clear cut line between what was my time and what was other people’s time (that I was giving them out of my time) and what time belonged to school/work. And now all of that has been thrown out the window and I’ve been having to teach myself how to do what I just described.

Take a goddamn break without having to tell everyone else how sorry I am for taking a day to actually rest and breathe and all those other important things. And yet I still have to justify those breaks to myself as time to take care of other things. 90% of the time, those breaks aren’t breaks to me, they’re time to work on my novel instead of my essay, or something like that.

And then I glance down at my phone and I’m hit with most of what I just wrote flooding into my head. And I try to tell myself that no, it’s okay to just take a break. And that I should be allowing myself to enjoy being alive instead of being a slave to expectations and responsibilities. And that as a person I know other people look up to I should be setting a better example of how to take care of yourself. And sometimes it works. Other times there’s more things at play and it doesn’t get through to me the same way, but it’s something that works. All of the hours I’ve spent with those character remind me that what I’m doing isn’t okay on a pretty regular basis at this point. And I’m really glad for that. And I hope that all of this stuff will continue to help me as it’s helping me right now.

At least I know that when I feel like I’m freaking out, I can open FGO and play through a quest and I’ll usually feel better. So I’m just gonna keep trying, keep managing, until I find a place where it’s finally all okay again, as much as it can be.

(P.S: More reasons that CasGil is my grailing target right now? Yeah that’s true but these reasons are deeper than “I got a Merlin look at that” or “Grailing Jalter is useful.” He’s a character that’s genuinely important to me and I think that finally investing in him is going to be really satisfying for me.)

#fgo #fate go #fate/go #fate grand order #fate/grand order #my writing #life update #i guess #serious stuff #if you read this thank you so much #anxiety #i don't know if stuff like this will become regular content #it might i dunno #but if it does it'll be more analysis and less personal #but seriously y'all take a break #breathe #take care of yourself #and if characters help you do that that's great

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twiststreet · 3 years

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My head’s hurting from work, so I’m going to type on here about the Marvel Comics February 2021 solicitations, for no reason, just to get my fingers moving about something besides whatever it is I do around here (?). (Does anyone know how to lawyer good?? Please send fried cheese).

Venom is looking for light that can pierce darkness, which they invented years ago-- it’s called “light.” That’s what light is, dummies.

There’s a comic character called Gwenom now... I guess that’s the Venom version of Gwen Stacey, a girl that Peter Parker killed when he threw one of his spunk-ropes at her legs at an inconvenient time. Spiderman: the relatable franchise!

Everybody’s fighting something called Knull this month. Knaaaah-I’m-good. Knothanks. Humor! Whee! Knull is actually the Korean version of a null-- if a null could be 12-15 beautiful, dancing hairless men, that would be the Marvel Universe’s greatest villain and art critic John Ruskin’s greatest contribution yet to popular culture. Just like I always said. (A fun thing on the internet is articles about Kpop stars balding, though, in case that got by you... kind of a fun topic...)

Black Panther is about Black Panther dealing with the “yearnings of his heart.” I sure hope this isn’t one of those “Obama wanted to sex up a leggy bisexual socialist” situations (a weird thing for Obama to be rambling about, but I mean, who among us, etc.).

They keep talking about a King in Black. Is that supposed to be a reboot of the King in Yellow? I guess black is cooler than yellow, for goths and what have you. Is this for the goths? Remember when goths were a huge genre in comics? “Life is a black flower in a cemetery, and when you open your mouth to scream, only the darkness can hear it. Anyways, here’s a comic book full of gags and laugh-em-ups.”-- Slave Labor Graphics, 1995-2005. Are those still a thing? Or are there comics now about whatever Generation Z does instead of being goth, like, I don’t know, watching people saying the n-word while playing videogames on twitch....? Are there comics in that genre?? I have no idea-- I don’t know their ways! The youths terrify me... (I spent like 2 minutes at lunch today looking at a Buzzfeed article about how a Tik Tok star vomited a snail and I had to stop because I felt blood coming out of my eyes... It got pretty J-Horror...)

“a mob of Knullified inmates” -- wordplay!

There’s a comic writer with the last name “Grønbekk“ now. I think that’d be neat, having a name that force people who write it to have to figure out how to do special characters on their keyboards for. I mean, it’d make filling in bubbles for the PSAT harder, and all, but when was the last time you took the PSAT? Last week??? During a pandemic?! In this economy? Aurora borealis???

I have a hard time pronouncing S.W.O.R.D. I keep wanting to pronounce the W. But I have an easy time not buying it! HEY-O!!! Proud of myself!

Oh right, they have Esad doing Eternals comics now. That’s like the biggest Kirby thing that I never liked very much, not including Golden Age stuff that I don’t really know. (I mean, there’s always some Golden Age comic about little kids at a ranch who are learning about their bodies or whatever, and who’s even read any of those except for your mom, judging by how much she knows about young men’s bodies). It felt like that was the one where he let the 70′s get to him. Or I don’t know-- the designs aren’t cool. The main guy, Blonde Man, he just has like a crotch-bib, and a bunch of badges he got from a Horseshoe Manufacturing Convention pinned to his plunging-neckline-for-men henley shirt, and like... It just wasn’t Kirby’s best day. (I mean, Kirby’s best day was probably when he murdered a bunch of sleeping Nazis that he came across in the woods who never knew what hit ‘em, but I mean, artistically). Yeah, yeah, the Celestials-- all the big weird Celestial shit-- sure, sure, I mean, yes, he was still Kirby. He was Kirby till the end. But. It’s just not stuff I’ve ever managed to get past like page 5 on... I’m sure Esad’s good or not or whatever, I like his work, but you know, I don’t feel any great like nostalgia or affection for that franchise, so. But there’s going to be a Kumail movie, so it’s like... the MCU’s getting into the Stuber business. I’ll end up seeing it and having to reevaluate eventually...

X-Men Legends, except the first legend up to bat is Fabian Nicieza. A finger goes down on a monkey’s paw somewhere.

X-Force. One of my nephews asked me what an X-Force was out of the blue the other day. I have no idea where he heard about it, but it was pretty worrisome stuff. Have you ever tried to explain what an X-Force is to a child? Not easy! “But you see then Rob Liefeld took over the New Mutants, but here’s the thing: Louise Simonson still had a great career on Superman, which I think shouldn’t go overlooked here”... I'm not great with kids...

“Cable gets together with his – ahem – intimate friend Domino.“

The Iron Man #6 solicitation is longer than the script to some of these comics. Calm it down, Alan Moore! It includes the phrase “With Hellcat on the psychological ropes” -- oh, the psychological ropes and what have you. Those ropes! You wouldn’t want people who are into the ropes in a tumblr way to get the wrong idea. (I’m not into the ropes-- I followed a girl on here who got into the ropes and it just... She seemed happy! I mean, I can’t judge it, but needing a merit badge in knots just to make out-- isn’t life hard enough?).

People in superhero comics are always struggling with their aunt’s sister and their uncle’s nephew. Boy, events are certainly happening to characters. Tensions are at an all-time high. Can things ever go back to how they once were???

There’s a sequel to Marvels except it’s called Marvel...? Kind of a reverse Alien, I guess. A copy of NFL Superpro is going to burst out of Kurt Busiek’s chest. RIP.

Are all of these characters on boats now??

“MARDI GRAS VARIANT COVER BY HUMBERTO RAMOS” Humberto Ramos is going to show us his tits for beads! Finally! Beads! Beads! Beads!

The new issue of Conan will be a “perfect jumping-on point”. You know: for people who worry that they wouldn’t be able to understand a fucking Conan comic without a helping hand. MENSA-types, scientists, philosophers, dreamers, rainbow-connectioners, and what have you. Aiming for that braniac crowd with a jumping on point for Conan, something that’ll help them see through the fog and really finally at last comprehend what’s going on. (Remember when Time Magazine called the Conan movie “Star Wars for psychopaths”...? Reviews for that first movie are a lot of fun).

The new Star Wars series is called the HIGH REPUBLIC. Yeaaaaaah man, George Washington grew that shit. You can make paper out of it. Star Wars knows what’s up. (You know that I was 1000% the “you can make paper out of it” guy for most of my life, you can guess that-- I'm not ashamed; the internet’s judged me too many times for it to hurt anymore!!!).

#Worst Hobby or Worstest Hobby?

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alwaysahiccupandastrid · 4 years

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People have already said this but like...the four “rotten” children in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory weren’t villains. Their behaviour was due to toxic parenting, and so it’s the parents who should have been punished instead.

Augustus Gloop just liked to eat chocolate - yeah, he ate way too much of it but his parents should have restricted how much chocolate he ate and made him eat healthier food. Liking to eat chocolate isn’t a crime, and in fact it’s people like Augustus who make people like Wonka so successful - by buying Wonka chocolate bars and sweets. And yeah, eating everything in sight and bending down to scoop out of the chocolate river was dumb, but he’s a kid? Why wasn’t his mother near him so she could stop him? Isn’t that the whole point of having a guardian with each child in the factory? I don’t think just liking to eat chocolate makes someone rotten or a bad person - with the exception of the “would you like some chocolate?...then you should have bought some” comment at Charlie, Augustus wasn’t really a bad kid, just greedy. His parents should have put their foot down and made him eat healthier food/less candy.

Violet Beauregarde was ambitious and competitive, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Yeah, she was kind of rude at times, and she had a slight attitude problem, but you can see that her behaviour was clearly influenced by her mother, who encouraged and pushed her to be like that and to focus on “the prize”, on “being a winner”. Chewing gum doesn’t make someone rotten - she shouldn’t have been chewing the same stick of gum for three months straight, that’s gross, but again, it’s clearly due to how her mother pushed her to break a record and win. And yeah, not listening to Wonka by snatching the gum from him and not spitting it out when he said to was dumb, but are you surprised that she wasn’t listening when she had her mother saying shit like “my little girl’s gonna be the first person to have a three course gum meal!” and when Wonka was waving it in front of her like that? If he had immediately said something like, “DONT chew it because if you do then it’ll turn you into a giant purple blueberry”, maybe it might have put her off a little bit.

Veruca Salt...oof, I feel strongly about this one. She was just a spoilt brat, but that’s because her parents - mostly her father - spoilt her rotten. Her parents should have been firmer and told her “no”, as well as teaching her to say “please” and “thank you”. Her parents were the ones who spoilt her, and that’s why she behaves like a brat. They thought that they could buy Veruca’s love by giving into her every whim, and she learnt that quickly because she knows all she has to do is ask and she’ll get it - but it didn’t buy her love at all, it just gave her the idea that she could have whatever she wanted and when she wanted, not the idea that she was loved. Also, in the 2005 film, you can see her mother drinking in what I presume is the early afternoon, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the family situation was that the mother is barely involved in her daughter’s upbringing and drinks quite a bit, and that the father is trying to keep the daughter happy by giving her everything she asks for - because he doesn’t know how else to show love or affection or how to keep her from acting out...as with a lot of rich people, his solution to any problem is to use his money to buy his way out. It’s not like she was outright a bully or hurting anyone, she was just a little girl who had bad parents and could have been fine if she’d been taught to say “please” or “thank you”, or if her parents had taught her “I want never gets”

(Side note: I was spoilt by my three grandparents quite a bit growing up - with my paternal grandparents they would buy me whatever I wanted and then some designer stuff because they’re pretty well off, since they worked their entire lives, and my maternal nan would always buy me chocolate/biscuits/stuff when I went out with her, as well as using her pension money to take me to the Christmas pantomime - with my mum and sister and cousins - when I was younger. Grandparents do that because it’s not their child, so they can. But they and my parents always knew when/how to say no, and to encourage me and my sister to have manners. Spoiling a child on special occasions is fine, like Christmas or birthdays or days out, but not ALL the time)

Mike Teavee liked television and video games - who doesn’t? He was incredibly smart, even to the point of being rude, but that doesn’t make him a bad person necessarily. A lot of the time, parents will just put their kid in front of a TV and leave them there to entertain them instead of actually doing something fun with them - maybe that’s the case with Mike. He clearly knows his stuff though, and just because he liked television and video games, doesn’t mean he’s a bad person - his parents should have imposed stricter guidelines on his TV/game time. When I was much younger, my parents and grandparents were very clear that we had to do our homework BEFORE the TV was turned on; obviously when we were a little older, they expected us to know that we had to do our homework and that we would do it when we did (especially me, because I was frankly terrified of pissing off teachers). Television and games are fine in moderation - his parents should have been stricter and made rules about the amount of time he spent in front of the television set, maybe encouraged him to go outside or read a book.

None of these four children deserved to be harmed, mutilated and/or almost killed. If anything, I feel like the parents should have been the ones getting taught a lesson and not the kids - like maybe the parents should have been the ones getting sucked up chocolate pipes/nearly turned into fudge/blowing up into a blueberry/tossed down a garbage chute after being viciously attacked by squirrels/shrunk down and used in a taffy puller. Like...they’re kids. They’ll grow up and learn, and they’re all like 10-12 at the most in CATF - they’re not even teenagers.

Those kids are probably going to bear trauma and humiliation for the rest of their lives. Augustus was mostly just covered in chocolate, but he was literally eating himself (which makes me wonder if he did actually become chocolate fudge but...). He nearly drowned in chocolate and god knows what else happened to him before he was rescued from the fudge machine. Violet is permanantly blue - sure, she’s now freakishly flexible, which could be good for competitions, but she could also be bullied for the rest of her life for having blue skin and being able to contort herself like that. Also, not to forget the actual body mutation itself where she literally blew up into a blueberry and was rolled around, jumped on, and then juiced. Veruca was just covered in trash, but she was attacked and thrown down a massive floor hole/chute by angry squirrels - it wouldn’t surprise me if it hurt a bit, and if she had nightmares about squirrels attacking for the rest of her life. Just imagine if she was walking one day and saw a squirrel - she’d probably freak out and not be able to cope in public with it. Mike was put in a taffy puller and literally physically stretched; he’s now like six or seven feet tall, and he’s as thin as a piece of paper. He’d definitely get mocked for being that height and being literally little more than a paper cutout - god knows what that did to his internal organs and bones.

If Wonka really wanted to teach them a lesson, he could have done it by harming/mutilating the parents and having the Oompa Loompas sing about THEM - they could have learnt through their parents actions that if they carried on the way they were, they’d end up meeting the same fate. Maybe that’s just me though.

#charlie and the chocolate factory #roald dahl #augustus gloop #veruca salt #mike teavee #willy wonka #violet beauregarde

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cartermarcian · 3 years

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4Kids Korner - Season 2 - Episode 3

I'm a bit late this week because I got caught up with work and school-related dread, but now I'm back to bring you more 4Kids products! This week we have an epic trifepic: Winx Club Magazine Issue one - the castle, Kirby Right Back at Ya - Ice Kirby (DVDouble-Shot) and Kirby Right Back at Ya - Kirby Comes to Cappy Town!

Let's start by getting the smallest one out of the way. Here's Kirby Right Back at Ya - Ice Kirby (2005)

There's something I oddly like about DVDouble-Shot. Starting In 2005, the DVDouble-Shot line was introduced featuring two-Episode DVDs of 4Kids most profitable shows as a way of promoting 4Kids TV. As for the consumer, the main selling point is that you could buy them for a low price, collect and possibly trade them with your friends, kind of like Pokémon cards. I like the idea of one kid saying to the other on the playground, "hey, wanna trade your Ninja Turtles for my YuGiOh?" How successful they were, I have no idea, but they're fun and easy to review on this show. Given their small portion size, practically every DVDouble-Shot is the same. This one had the episodes "The Chill Factor" and "DeDeDe's Snow Job," in accordance with the ice theme of the disc. It also features assorted promos for then-current and upcoming 4Kids shows identical to those seen in the 4Kids TV September demo disc (which I will hopefully review some time in the future.) Before we move on, though there's one little thing I want to point out about the box art. You can't see it in the photos I've provided, but the ice monster on the cover is far more pixelated than Kirby, if you look closely at it, so it appears to me that they lifted it right out of the episode and placed it on the cover. I guess that's just what happens when no official art of a character exists for your graphic designers to use...

Now that we have that one out of the way, let's talk about the stars of today's episode, which actually turned out to have much more historical value than most of the other stuff in my collection. So say hello to the Winx Club Magazine Premiere Issue, The Castle (2005)

This is a very special addition to my collection not only because it's part of what I consider to be 4Kids' absolute peak year, but since the book was presumably printed in January of 2005, it means this was one of the first pieces of of merchandise to feature the now-famous 4Kids TV logo. Heck it might have even been printed before then. As for the book itself, it's quite cute as it features everything an 8-11 year old girl wanting to be a hip and trendy 2000s teenager could want, and contains surprisingly few ads for Winx Club merch. And even more adorable, is the publisher's attempts to fit that description using words like "slammin'" in sentences. I call it a magazine, but it's really more dedicated to the comic included, "The Castle," which I would have read, but I needed to get some sleep the day I read it, so I skimmed the book's numerous activities, instead. But for those still interested, the comic is a retelling of Bloom's enrollment in Alfea, with original art that's pretty accurate to the actual show. But the book's real allure is the activities. Like the free trading card you'll see in the photo above. It even comes with a full-page description of what a trading card game is, making reference to YuGiOh in the process, which I thought was funny since 4Kids owned that, and also because it heavily implies that only boys play YuGiOh when the show itself has many female duelists. After that, you have a faux interview with Bloom taken from the perspective of a fellow Alfea Student. What I remember most clearly about that, is that Bloom says she listens to top 40's, which made me think "man, she's got some trash music taste," even though I, myself have said on multiple occasions off of tumblr that I listen to basically everything. Also included on the magazine are a paper fortune-telling toy, a best friend diary which includes a "secret crush" slot to fill in, a page for writing down predictions about the reader's future, and even a personality test which assigns your traits to a type of flower, as suggested by Flora on the page. The funny thing about this is that one question asks for the reader's favorite kind of movie, and one of the options is "anime everything," which I thought was funny since anime was just starting to get big at that time in America, and the online anime community was just starting to grow. Finally, on the last page, probably the most creative of all, is a step-by-step slumber party plan by Musa, which details inviting everyone over, having them show up dressed as their favorite popstar (like Brittany Spears, for example) and bring their favorite CD from said popstar, then taking turns playing them and talking about them. It sounds quite fun, and it made me smile imagining all the little kids who tried this. That's exactly what I think is awesome about children's entertainment: it makes them happy and builds their imagination. So that's the Winx Club Magazine, a really good buy, but I must admit they used the same art of the girls more than once on a few occasions, and also wrote in a plot hole in the interview with Bloom, where she says she discovered her powers as a child, but in the show she unlocks them at her current age when saving Stella from the first monsters of the series. So it may have a couple flukes, but still quite enjoyable.

And last, but never least, it's time for Kirby Right Back at Ya: Kirby Comes to Dream Land (2002)

This one is also historically significant for two reasons. One is that it was the very first release of one of the more famous non-Pokémon/YuGiOh shows 4Kids had to offer, but it also played a part in promoting the very launch of the Fox Box, as you'll see on the box art. This disc may only have the first three episodes of the show, but it super makes up for it with a plethora of special features, more than any of the DVDs I currently own, and that they strangely enough don't tell you about on the box. And speaking of the box, though you might not see it, the episode descriptions on the back are written entirely in comic sans. Yeah, it's clear to see 4Kids wasn't quite as sharp as they would be in the next few years... and the DVD menus are also written entirely in this font. But that doesn't take away from the outstanding value. much like the Fright to the Finish DVD, this one's special features are split between two menus. For this one, there's "More Kirby" and "Added Attractions," which is the far superior one, but more on that in a minute. The More Kirby menu features a character gallary telling you about the main cast, set to music from the show. Then there's "Kirbyoke," which is there to teach the kids the words to the theme song. And finally, we have a preview for the next DVD in the series, which at that point hadn't a proper name, so Mike Pollock's voice just refers to it as "Kirby Right Back at Ya Volume 2." Then, in the "Added Attractions" menu, we have a promo for Cubix - Robots for Everyone's first DVD release, a short promo for the newly-launched FoxBox.TV website, and the star of this review by far, "What's Inside The Fox Box?!" This incredible 14 minute long promo (which you can find on Youtube, by the way,) previews every single show in the Fox Box's initial lineup as a way of hyping up the network for it's September 2002 launch. Well, kind of... You see, 4Kids made multi-minute promos for their own productions, complete with plot synopses by Mike Pollock and others and theme songs for the shows. Meanwhile, Stargate Infinity, a third-party show, only got a promo featuring still images of the main cast, a paper-thin explanation of the plot and no opening, all clocking in at under a minute. So, yeah, pretty lame move on 4Kids part, but at least we get to see HD footage of 4Kids lost Ultraman Tiga dub. Ultimately, it's a really fun promo from 4Kids' very beginnings as a dedicated children's entertainment company, even though it uses some uncut clips of guns in Fighting Foodons since the dub wasn't finished at that point. One last thing to point out: the promo for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (which hadn't even started production at the time,) features an unused theme song demo for the series which also made it's way onto the illusive Fox Box CD. So there you have it, one of the DVDs that started it all. Thanks for reading about it, as well as my other items this week. I will be back with more next week, so hang in there, and I'll see you all next time. Take care!

#4Kids #4Kids TV #4Kids Anime #4Kids Dub #4Kids Entertainment #Kirby #Kirby Right Back at Ya #Kirby of the Stars #Winx Club #Books #Fox Box #DVDs #Cartoons

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jippy-kandi · 4 years

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Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna Movie Review

I've seen the film. It was pretty good! Spoilers under the cut.

So, before I watched it, I did read a few bits and pieces of random spoilers. However, I did NOT read the novel – because I wanted to judge the film on its own merits and not be thinking about “what the novel did better”. But I knew things like most characters were sidelined, who the villain was, and how the movie ends. I still have not read the novel.

This is not a “proper” review of the movie -- because what’s the fun in that? You can google actual reviews of the movie by anime websites, if that’s what you’re after. These are just my personal thoughts, impressions and fangirl ramblings (I bias Yamato hard). Plus, a few comments from two others I went to the screening with for a different perspective.

It was like nerd city at the movie theatre, LOL. So. Many. Nerds. Some people even brought Digimon plush toys to the screening! I’ve never witnessed that before. It was great though, being surrounded by so many Digimon fans. I think the cinema was more than half full -- and this was an 800-seat cinema! 400+ Digimon fans? Whoa! I actually thought like only 20 people would show up, LOL.

I tried to put the following thoughts in “order” but some of it isn’t due to the nature of what they’re about . . . plus, I couldn’t 100% remember what order the scenes were in.

Screen time distribution (most to least): Taichi/Yamato, Koushirou, the 02 kids (roughly: Takeru, Hikari, Daisuke, Miyako, Ken, Iori), Mimi, Jou, a hamburger, a whistle, a beer, Sora. (Sora got shafted hard.)

Taichi was exactly just Taichi, which is 1000x better than tri. Taichi. He really did seem like a 22-year-old version of Adventure Taichi, beer-drinking and porn-watching and all. Thank you, Toei. Please don’t fuck him up in the reboot. (Although maybe that’s the idea?)

Yamato is the coolest motherfucker on a motorcycle. He looked SO DAMN GOOD in this movie. There were even a few gratuitous shots of his arse for no apparent reason, LOL. Or maybe that’s just me thinking, whenever he’s bending over or his back’s to us, “That’s a nice arse.” XD (HE IS THE ONLY 2D CHARACTER I THIRST FOR, I PROMISE. I’m actually engaged to Jungkook of BTS.)

Koushirou was the same old Koushirou we all know and love, doing smart stuff and generally being useful. He has no pointed interest in clothes or girls (Koumi began and died in tri., you guys). When it was shown that he was a company president, some people in the audience laughed, lol.

Takeru was pretty bland. I guess tri. Takeru will always be the definitive Takeru to me. This Takeru definitely evolved straight from 02 Takeru (who was also bland AF). But he was fine? I miss overly confident, charming Takeru. Also, where was your crush on your big bro??? lol

Hikari . . . was also fine? I don’t have much to say about her. I like tri. Hikari better (because she was cute? *shallow*). This Hikari was just serviceable. I think because everyone really is just playing second fiddle to Taichi and Yamato, they didn’t really add charms to the other characters. They just . . . serve the plot. And it seemed, at the beginning of the movie, that Takeru and Hikari were going to be in it a lot -- but they have most of their scenes in the first third-ish of the movie before disappearing until the end.

Daisuke was also exactly the same. But I’ve never been a fan of him, nor do I hate him (though he did get on my nerves in 02 sometimes . . .). I just don’t care about him, or any of the 02 kids, personally. :P

I don’t think Ken had a personality in this movie, LOL. He was fine, though. Serviceable. I’m sorry I lack opinions here, but there really wasn’t much to go on. He has no Kaiser issues or anything, he just seems like a normal, well-adjusted kid . . . with no personality, lol.

Iori didn’t have a personality either -- but everyone has always known that. Ha! XP He is just an extra reading lines. I found it odd that he seems so short though? I kept thinking he was still a 9-year-old because of the height difference between him and the others . . . I think Toei forgot that HE IS 17 AND THUS SHOULD BE VERY CLOSE TO FULL ADULT HEIGHT. Puberty is amazing, Toei! (Yeah, he can just be a really short person, I know. I wouldn’t have made that design choice, though. Especially when he’s short compared to Daisuke . . . who is short compared to Yamato . . . and Iori really is a midget.)

Miyako . . . it’s probably due to her voice actress, but she was SO LOUD. And I found her annoying because of it. In fact, she was the only annoying character in the movie to me. Loud people can be charming . . . but I didn’t find her charming. Sorry, Miyako fans. =\

Mimi has an e-commerce startup at 21, lol. OK, you go girl. She was definitely shafted, but she was in it a bit more than Jou I think, and definitely more than poor Sora. Probably a few minutes? Yeah, not a lot, especially compared to Taichi and Yamato. In one of her (four?) scenes, she loses consciousness and ends up in the hospital -- and Taichi, Koushirou and Jou are in her hospital room when Yamato bursts in and goes, “Jou!” You know, instead of acknowledging Mimi, THE COMATOSE FRIEND IN THE HOSPITAL BED. I just found it funny that’s how they chose to frame that scene. :P

Jou only had a few lines, but he was still in it more than Sora. But he is really just a doctor here. He could’ve been an extra hired for a doctor role and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, lol. Oh, Toei, please give all the characters almost-equal screen time in the reboot? Please???

Sora had like four lines and thirty seconds of screen time, TOTAL. I think the decision to hold her back from THE ENTIRE PLOT was SOLELY to have the scene where she reacts to Taichi blowing the whistle, so you know that the sound is going out of Neverland and reaching the real world (or whatever dramatic effect they were going for). I really think that’s it. That, or her voice actress did something terrible to Toei and they’re punishing her. :P

The movie basically opens up with Parrotmon attacking. Takeru was the first to be shown, then Hikari, then Taichi. Taichi is wearing those special goggles Koushirou made for him and he looked goofy AF lol. At one point, Greymon tackles Parrotmon into a building where you see some people inside running away from the rubble. My sister said (without knowing anything about tri.): “Does Tai not care that his digimon definitely just killed some people in that building?” I chuckled because . . . well. ;)

Yamato enters the scene COOL AS FUCK on his motorcycle (most of his entrance is shown in a clip that Toei released) and thank you Toei for doing that for him. He deserves a showy entrance. :) Although I do find it funny that he’s obsessed with motorcycles, given I still remember giggling as a kid at him NOT liking riding on the back of some guy’s scooter in Digimon: The Movie.

The music was nice and nostalgic and I have no complaints.

There is a quick scene of Yamato seeing a kid in a music store getting a harmonica, and watching a street performer singing. Obviously he’s thinking about his passion for music as a kid/teen (and his childhood in general?) and it was a nice touch. I think by the end of the movie you would’ve understood that Yamato was letting go of his past (childhood) and heading towards the future (adulthood).

A friend of Yamato’s makes a comment to him that Japan’s Self-Defense Forces are going to recruit him into the military due to his experience as a Chosen Child. Yamato replies, “that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard”. BUT . . . this is Kizuna telling you EXACTLY what is going to happen, lol. I actually “predicted” Yamato’s career path years ago -- but it wasn’t hard, as there is really only two ways it could’ve gone, lol. Military test pilot or commercial air pilot -- which one, especially given the context Kizuna just gave us, is more likely? ;)

Yamato is shown wearing GLASSES in class (looking nerd-hot AF). Toei Animation must not have researched Yamato’s astronaut career as intensively as I did, and therefore did not know that astronauts need 20/20 vision lol. Oh well, he can get it corrected. :p (Or, he doesn’t actually need glasses but WEARS THEM AS A FASHION STATEMENT. Because I can believe that. XD)

I think Yamato had about three different outfits in the movie? And he looked good in all of them. Are there people out there who think he’s not fashionable? I'd find that opinion strange, given the fact that the staff behind 02 and tri. were actively designing him as the well-dressed cool guy of the group. He wears exactly the kind of clothes the well-dressed cool guys at my high school/university wore. Sure, sometimes they force green tops on him purely for nostalgic reasons and it therefore clashes -- there is only so much you can do with a green top -- but overall, he is supposed to come across as someone who cares about his appearance. If you don’t think so, you’re either not into fashion or you aren’t aware of 2005-2010 fashion as a teen/young adult. (If Yamato was a millionaire, I’m sure he’d dress identical to BTS with super expensive clothes lol. But he dresses very well for a “normal” person. :p)

Taichi was shown with two of his friends who were asking him about his aspirations or something, and the guy looked like an unattractive nerd. My sister said: “I didn’t like how they showed Tai with sloppy friends, but showed Matt with good-looking people.” LOL. Her favourite as a kid was Taichi, BTW. XD;

Menoa and Imura were . . . OK characters. Menoa seemed likeable enough at first, but when her real intentions were revealed she turned into a typical, crazy, possessed villain. Imura was really just there to service the plot, like a necessary extra on set. There was nothing more to him.

Menoa’s English is terrible. And it’s very noticeable because she inserts random English words into her Japanese sentences, lol. I laughed when Koushirou told her that her Japanese is very good (because SHE IS ACTUALLY FLUENT IN JAPANESE . . . and not so much in English). Yes, I know it’s because it’s a Japanese voice actress -- but it was still funny every time she spoke heavily accented English, followed by fluent Japanese. :P

Menoa’s partner digimon, Morphomon, was cute in design. Eosmon was the villain digimon and was Menoa’s attempt at recreating Morphomon, who disappeared on her. Does this sound kind of familiar? lol

Omegamon devolves into Koromon and Tsunomon when fighting against Eosmon. Back in Koushirou’s office, Menoa explains that you only have a limited amount of time with your digimon before they disappear and that fighting accelerates it. Taichi has a circle of lights on his digivice that lose a bar of light every time he fights with Agumon. When the lights all disappear, Agumon will disappear. Koushirou and Takeru look at their digivices to check if they’ve got it – they don’t, and they are relieved. Yamato then checks his and . . . well. He has it. His eyes start watering and he storms out of the room saying something along the lines of his bond with Gabumon will not be broken. I FUCKING LOVED THIS SCENE. Top 3 in the movie for me, personally. We all have weaknesses. Emo Yamato is mine, lol. I like it when he gets so emotional he cries in front of other people. :3

The “porn stash” scene with Agumon at Taichi’s apartment was HILARIOUS. The funniest scene of the movie. Everyone in the cinema laughed so hard. It was Taichi’s reaction that sold it -- it was BRILLIANT. The magazines actually had girls on the cover wearing bikinis, so, at least Agumon kept his innocence! lol

Gennai randomly appears in Taichi’s apartment to confirm the thing everyone should’ve always known (but that they just made up for Kizuna and which DEFINITELY led to “creative differences” with Digimon series director Hiroyuki Kakudou). This, of course, would be the whole idea that the more you “grow up”, the more your bond with your partner digimon breaks until, eventually, they disappear. Does the idea have problems? Yep. Menoa lost her partner digimon Morphomon at age 14 because she decided to accelerate her learning and go to university . . . meanwhile, Koushirou is the president of his own freaking company and still has Tentomon by his side. Yeah, OK, Kizuna. And, sure, you can argue that it’s about BECOMING AN ADULT -- but I think you’d just be drawing lines where YOU want to draw them. How mature is 14-year-old Menoa to be an “adult”? Is Koushirou really not mature enough at 21? And what about Jou, who I definitely think is an adult in all sense of the word? And so on. So arguments about this I think are valid, but at the same time . . . it’s Digimon. I think it’s a flawed idea but I also just shrug and accept it as it is, lol.

I “love” how Gennai just pops in when it’s convenient to the plot. Hello Gennai, what’s dark Gennai up to? Have you seen him around licking underaged girls anywhere? No? You’re just popping by to confirm shit to Taichi? OK, cool. See you in the tri. sequel, never. (He actually does give Taichi a reasonable answer as to why the growth/bond thing was never brought up before: that it’s like talking about how long you have to live. I bought it.)

Yamato is basically the reason the 02 kids are even in the movie, lol. He asks them to investigate Imura and Menoa for him and they do so. They contact him later on with info and they ask that he take them out for okonomiyaki (which is awful by the way, lol) as thanks and he smiles and says he can do that. This is just a nice exchange between them. :)

Yamato eventually confronts Imura (or is it the other way around, lol) and Imura HAS A GUN. Which was surprising to me because I remember that in the English dub, Puppetmon’s gun was censored, so seeing a gun in a Digimon movie was a little surprising. Anyway, Yamato doesn’t seem concerned by the fact that this dude can just shoot him dead, lol. Gabumon is with him, but still. Imura can still kill you before Gabumon kills him, you know. XD But it’s all good because Imura turns out to be an undercover FBI agent who wants to arrest Menoa, THE REAL VILLAIN. I was spoiled with this so no surprise.

There is a scene where Yamato has his hand tenderly on Takeru’s face because he lost consciousness. It was sweet, but I would’ve liked it more if Takeru had more of a personality in the film so I could actually care about him, lol. Yamato’s such a caring big brother, though. :)

Yamato was perfect in this movie. PERFECT. I had a few issues with his characterisation in tri. (I think he was, overall, about 80% Yamato), but he was ALL YAMATO, ALL THE TIME here. He is my favourite fictional character of all time, so DEAL WITH THE BIAS. I love him and, honestly, Yamato>Taichi all day, every day. I totally understand you, Sora. DON’T @ ME TAICHI STANS. XP

The ONLY minor quibble I had was that Yamato asks Taichi if they should really try to save the other kids, because fighting means it speeds up their bonds breaking. My quibble is: YAMATO IS NOT FUCKING SELFISH. He’s SO selfless. He would fight to save the other kids NO QUESTIONS, even if it meant he’s accelerating the destruction of his bond with Gabumon. But I give this scene a huge pass because it basically had to go like that, because ONE person out of Taichi/Yamato had to be reluctant so that the OTHER person pushes forward and has a “hero” moment. And who’s going to get that “hero” moment? The actual hero and MAIN CHARACTER of Digimon, Taichi, of course. SO I GET IT. I even agree and would’ve written it that way too, for Taichi to be the leader and reassure Yamato that this is what they’re doing (unlike in tri. where Yamato 1000% deserved the mantle of LEADER and Taichi could’ve whinged off the edge of a cliff and I. WOULD. NOT. CARE.). BUT I will still rant about this 30 second scene in my blog and scream to the universe that Yamato Ishida is the most selfless fictional being on the face of the planet and you better fucking know it. :)

Menoa is Maki 2.0. As soon as Menoa is revealed as being behind the evil stuff, she is instantly psychotic. So Maki 2.0 she definitely is. But . . . I don’t really care. Could Toei have been more original? Yes. But I can’t be bothered to criticise them for recycling a plot, because I’d rather criticise tri. for doing it in the first place, LOL. OK, honestly? At least Menoa’s plot had an actual resolution, instead of Maki being revealed and then . . . fucking off out of the entire series so abruptly. Like??? Kizuna followed through with it, tri. did not. That’s why I’m OK with the rehash, because Kizuna did tri.’s plot better. (Maki’s plot would’ve been good if the tri. writers didn’t get lazy AF at the end and just . . . didn’t . . . finish it.) I might also be giving Kizuna a huge pass because it made me feel things, lol.

The movie really picks up after Menoa reveals her intentions and they end up in Neverland (a place she created in the Digital World?) where she claims all the Chosen Children can stay as children with their partner digimon forever. It became a lot more interesting after that. But that’s also near the climax, lol.

In Neverland, all the kids who have lost consciousness are in their child forms (from the first season) and are basically Menoa’s puppets. This was really cool; it not only gave you nostalgic feels to see them like that, but it was also pretty creepy to see them with glowing red eyes. The Chosen Children, as kids, attack Taichi and Yamato. I laughed when Patamon attacked Yamato’s face and Tentomon tackled Taichi, lol. But I have to say though that Sora’s absence was VERY glaring here. Because . . . everyone was there, but her. :(

Other Chosen Children from the past are present in Neverland too. I FREAKING SAW MICHAEL, MIMI’S AMERICAN FRIEND, STANDING BEHIND HER. I was so surprised at his appearance that I didn’t catch anyone else. There were definitely others, but I didn’t make them out at all because I was so caught off-guard with Michael. XD; (I DON’T EVEN GIVE A SHIT ABOUT HIM, LOL.)

Someone said that Taichi called out Meiko’s name in the movie . . . well, I’m pretty sure that Yamato does, and he calls her by her last name, “Mochizuki”. This is when they’re in Neverland and Menoa shows them her “collection” of Chosen Children. Meiko pops up for one second. It was like Kizuna went, “Oh! Hey, tri. existed by the way. Now let’s move on.” lol

While being attacked by the Chosen “puppets” in Neverland, Taichi manages to reach his hand out and grab Hikari’s whistle and blow it -- effectively “waking” them all up from their puppet states. Everyone in the cinema got hit with audible FEELS, because when Taichi blew Hikari’s whistle the screen flashbacked to that scene from the first movie. I found the collective audience reaction more powerful than the scene itself, lol. But I really liked it, too. :)

So while everyone else is in Neverland . . . SORA IS IN HER APARTMENT HUGGING PIYOMON. Thanks, Sora, you’re a real friend. *cough* After Taichi’s whistle blow, she intuitively knows what’s going on and says she believes in everyone . . . THANKS AGAIN, SORA, YOU CHEERLEADER. OK, look: I do think it is pretty selfish of Sora to choose not to fight. I understand all the reasoning behind it, I even think SHE DESERVES TO BE SELFISH FOR ONCE etc., and I am fine with it -- but I still think it’s selfish. Because it is. And that’s OK, nobody is perfect, and people are selfish from time to time. If only it wasn’t glaringly obvious that her selfishness happened only because Toei just wanted her out of the way for most of the film . . . her absence, as stated before, really was noticeable in scenes where literally everyone else was included but her. (I’d also just like to point out that her voice actress was STILL CREDITED THIRD after Taichi and Yamato in the ending credits. LOLing forever -- such little contribution, such big recognition. XD)

But don’t get me wrong, I love Sora. I really fucking do. Taichi used to be my second favourite character in Digimon for a long, long time -- but Sora managed to dethrone him from second place (fucking Yamato probably helped, LOL). I think, screen time-wise, Kizuna did her a bigger disservice than Our War Game did. Yes, let that sink in. Remember how little she was in that movie? It’s worse in Kizuna. But story-wise and character-wise? Kizuna probably did better, because Sora was angry over a hairclip in Our War Game lmao. If you haven’t already, check out her memorial story short “To Sora” that Toei Animation released online. It’s six minutes of Sora . . . which is 5 and a half more minutes than in Kizuna! XD;

There’s a scene where Agumon and Gabumon tell Taichi and Yamato that they like watching them grow up. It was very touching, but also very brief. It was one of my favourite moments though. It made me have quick flashbacks in my mind of itty bitty Taichi and Yamato growing up into who they are now. The enormity of everything they had been through since the first season. THE HISTORY. THE GROWTH. It hit me right in the feels.

Taichi and Yamato’s homoerotic-ness was actually toned down a lot, especially compared to tri.. They don’t have forced disputes where they get angry at each other and the gay sexual tension shoots through the roof. They’re just . . . friends. Two dudes who drink beer together and moan about their lives. The partnership between them and their digimon were the focus of the movie, more so than the friendship between them. I actually liked this, and I usually care more about the human connections over the human-digimon ones.

“Shipping moments” – if you squint hard enough. Takari: At the start, Takeru shields Hikari from harm. Sorato: While Taichi informs Yamato about the lives of some of the other Chosen Children, Yamato lets Taichi know what Sora is up to -- that she’s seriously studying flower arranging. Kenyako: Ken asks Miyako, and only Miyako, if she’s OK (when Daisuke is right next to her). Taiora: Sora says Taichi’s name when he blows the whistle in Neverland and she hears it all the way in the real world. (My sister legit whispered to me: “SHE DIDN’T SAY MATT’S NAME.” BITCH, he ain’t the one whistling! XP) Now, Digimon Adventure tri. shipbaited hard -- but Kizuna did not do this. All of these very small moments felt very organic and passed as if they were a natural part to the story, instead of something shoehorned in with the explicit purpose of shipbaiting. I really liked this approach. The Sorato one in particular (surprise, surprise) said a lot about Yamato’s relationship to Sora without being explicit about it. He knows what she’s up to when her childhood best friend doesn’t? Yeah, those two are definitely hooking up after classes. :P (I jest. But it does tell you with one sentence that Yamato and Sora keep in touch, which I appreciated. You gotta do that if you’re having babies together within the decade, you know?)

There were next to NO evolution sequences. I might remember it happening once or twice? Max. And . . . that was a REALLY lame choice. Especially when Agumon and Gabumon evolve to their newest forms; Taichi and Yamato are just floating with them up into the air and then, poof, the new evolutions are shown. Google tells me they’re just called Agumon -Bond of Courage- and Gabumon -Bond of Friendship- respectively . . . they were not named in the movie. Here’s the thing: I don’t really care about digimon and evolutions. But it was so underwhelming; they really should’ve amped it up with an evolution sequence to be like HERE BE THESE NEW AWESOME FUCKING DIGIMON ‘bout to kick your arse. It seems like such a no-brainer that I really don’t know who would sign off on a evolution sequence not happening. Oh well. As for the designs? They are OK, but definitely could’ve been better. I think “cool AF” when I see Omegamon and all his forms. I don’t think that of these new evolutions lol. (But my sister liked them and thought they looked cool, so . . .)

Also . . . the fighting scenes in this movie were pretty bad. Very underwhelming. Our War Game and Diablomon Strikes Back did a lot better. I both like and dislike the animation style in Kizuna. I do actually like the art of it, like how it looks. But I kinda dislike how it’s actually animated, because it doesn’t really look like they’re moving fluidly enough. It’s a bit too choppy. I just expected the fighting/action scenes to be more exciting (I was hoping Our War Game-level) and of a higher standard. But they are not, unfortunately.

Everyone in the cinema audibly GASPED when Taichi and Yamato were just talking to Agumon and Gabumon after the final battle, and then they turned around and they . . . just . . . disappeared. And then Taichi and Yamato CRIED. SO. HARD. And I actually started repeating in my head, DO NOT CRY, DO NOT CRY, lol. I didn’t cry! Almost, though. :p I really loved this scene. And I really think, narratively, it would’ve worked A LOT better for the movie to end on this scene. The actual ending scene that comes after it felt a little too out of place and tacked on to me. More on that later.

There was a small smattering of applause at the end of the movie, lol. But I did not clap, because I find that weird. :p (Even though I clapped, alone in my house, when Parasite won Best Picture at the Oscars LOL.)

The ending credits showed different photos of the kids. Unfortunately, I . . . don’t really remember most of them. XD; I think I saw Sora arranging flowers? And maybe Daisuke and Ken having dinner? I definitely saw Iori doing kendo, because I thought it was cool. And the one photo I definitely remember for sure: Yamato standing in front of a space shuttle. I stan astronaut!Yamato so hard, you guys have no idea how happy it made me that he’s pursuing his dream omfg my little baby boy. XD;

This is definitely Taichi and Yamato’s movie. Everyone else is just playing supporting/cameo roles -- some more than others, as outlined way above. (Well, except Menoa I suppose . . . and Koushirou to the extent that he’s just needed to be the Digi IQ.) But if you’re NOT a fan of either Taichi or Yamato? I think, though you’ll probably love all the nostalgia bits, you’ll also be really disappointed -- especially considering this is supposed to be the final instalment of the original Adventure continuity. It’s a great “love letter” to Taichi and Yamato specifically, but not for the other characters, sadly.

I saw the movie with my sister (a non-fan who used to like it as a kid) and a friend (a casual fan now, but she used to like it a lot years ago). I’ll refer to them as “S”(ister) and “F”(riend), respectively.

After the movie ended:

S: “Did you cry? Because two guys beside me were literally sobbing. SOBBING.” *Judging.* (LMAO.)

What was our favourite part of the movie?

Top 3 scenes for me were Yamato storming off with his eyes watering when he realises his bond with Gabumon has an expiry; the brief “speech” Agumon and Gabumon give to Taichi and Yamato about wanting to see them grow up; and Taichi and Yamato crying at Agumon and Gabumon vanishing. EMO EMO EMO.

S: “Sora doing fuck-all.” (LMAO.) F: “Yeah! What was up with that? It’s like they forgot she even existed.” S: “Sora is just a cunt.” (Note: S has a dry sense of humour and isn’t really being malicious. BUT . . . I do think most viewers watching Kizuna would have a poor opinion of Sora in this movie . . .)

F: “I liked the 02 kids. I guess it was mostly Davis. And I liked when Veemon was riding on Armadillomon’s back and Wormmon was trailing behind. It was just this random thing but it was funny. Maybe I just like making fun of Wormmon.”

About the idea that growing up affects your bond with your digimon:

S: “What I took from it was that you shouldn’t grow up too fast. Cherish your childhood, cherish your memories. But, eventually, you do need to grow up.”

F: “I don’t understand how this whole “Digimon disappear when you grow up” thing wasn’t known. Weren’t there older people with Digimon before? You’d think they could have made a more specific threat that was just affecting their digimon, not be like, “Yeah this happens to everyone, it’s just a fact of life that we’ve never addressed before.” It felt a bit like they were telling the audience to grow up and get over Digimon.”

What would we rate the film?

I probably have to watch it again to give a definitive score, but at the moment, I give it about a 7/10. It was good, but not great. The last half was pretty great though -- it definitely started out slow (there was a lot of exposition via Menoa vomiting words). Is it better than tri.? Chapter 3: Confession, no. Confession is better, I think, but I also haven’t seen it in years. But the rest of tri.? Probably. Especially the pile of shit that was Chapter 6: Our Future. *cough*

S: “4/10.″ (LOL.)

F: “It was better than tri.. I guess a 7/10 too.”

Sequel?

I think it’s definitely a possibility. I feel like the very last scene of the movie was slapped on just to be like, “Well, if we don’t do a sequel, you know that Taichi and Yamato are definitely going to reunite with their partners eventually for the 02 epilogue to happen.” The scene is of Taichi and Yamato saying something along the lines of meeting Agumon and Gabumon again one day.

And while it’s an uplifting ending, I actually think the movie would’ve ended better with the scene before that -- with the digimon disappearing and Taichi and Yamato crying. It would’ve made a bigger emotional impact and raised the movie up just a notch higher to end on such a ballsy note. But, of course, it would’ve meant a sequel definitely had to happen. So the actual final scene was added on so that a sequel doesn’t need to be made -- but that it leads to the 02 epilogue “off-camera”, in case they really don’t do a sequel.

I think there’s a 50/50 chance of a sequel. The movie actually does close the Adventure story pretty well -- it has all the ingredients to lead to the 02 epilogue without actually taking you there. But it also keeps the possibility of a sequel open, where they can show you exactly how Taichi and Yamato reunite with their digimon.

And, honestly, the only “barrier” I see to a sequel happening is that the reboot is airing next month -- and it’ll be confusing for the next generation of kids to follow one continuity, and then have a movie released with characters they recognise, but in an entirely different continuity. Unless, of course, the sequel comes out in another two years and the reboot has finished after one season (though there’s always a possibility it goes on beyond one season).

S: “Yes, I think there’ll be a sequel.”

F: “It seemed quite final. But obviously if the 02 epilogue is accurate that can’t be the end. Unless Matt finds Gabumon again on the moon I guess. “Oh hey yeah we don’t really disappear, we just go to space!” Yeah, it could go either way. Maybe they are saving Sora’s big part for the sequel!” (XD)

And that’s a wrap! I’ll probably read the novelisation of the movie eventually . . . and it’ll probably be like 95% the same, lol.

#digimon #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #digimon last evolution kizuna #digimon last evolution #digimon kizuna #review #spoilers #50% thirst #30% jokes #20% actual content #XD

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transrightsjimin · 3 years

Photo

@trespassers-will ok here we go

i also watched the various videos hidden inside each photo and the videos that were posted today as well and took notes too hjfhk

1. hobi’s room

okay so i thought i would rank jin’s room first but then i saw hobi’s room and i saw that couch nd went OMG okay thats no.1!! i love this interior so so much, like i normally hate orange and blue as a combination but this seems almost more like red and blue and it really reminds me of hopeworld. there’s many pop art-like graphic design posters adorning the walls, showing lines like ‘hope‘, ‘sweet’ and ‘my way‘. the shoes on the closet(?) behind him were disaplayed bc those are the colours we wears the most in his fashion. and then there’s this iconic inflatable clear pink couch and him wearing a pink robe and just GOD what a mood, i want a room like this!! the chair reminds me a lot of the type of fun quirky furniture i fantasized about and incorporated into my drawings as a kid when i was around 8-11, probably because i got inspired by stuff like totally spies and polly pocket, which had all these designs clearly inspired by 60s and 70s space age design but more in pink and purple i guess.

also i hate the search for such stills bc even w safe search on, you still have godawful f3tish drawings depicting those kids from totally spies ending up in search results and it’s disgusting. but yeah it reminded me of that

youtube

when i say polly pocket, i particularly mean this quik-clik (magnetic clothes and hair) era in 2005 which was what i had some stuff from. i had that couch / movie night! set and the pool and that

also i just really like hobi’s room because with all the posters and cabinets and clothing items laid out and a carpet and fun colours and whatnot, it really feels like an actual room you could live in, unlike any of the other rooms which feel very empty or too minimalist to me. but YEAH hobi’s room is my fav, i love the way a fuller room feels more cozy and habitable and floaties and inflatable floaties are AMAZING

2. jin’s room

jin’s room is so prettyyyy!! jins explanation of the room was very uhm confident and funny but i love that. the couch looks like a lilac shell, which makes sense as everything else looks very pearlescent. i really love cool-toned pastels like lilac, powder / baby blue, periwinkle and everything just looks like it’s part of a waiting hall for mermaids or something. there’s also gems in it which took me a while to realize bc i only noticed the glass chandelier and lamp but then i saw them in his hand nd on the table. i dont rly care abt gems / jewels but overall i just love how this whole room speaks ‘pretty‘ to me. robes are always a plus. as i was writing this, i was also reminded of hair extension mullet jin with iridescent clothing and all and that is actually my all time fav photoshoot / look of him. him saying he’s the gem of the room makes sense too as he’s sitting in the shell like a pearl. jin pretty pretty mermaid

ok from here on its getting harder bc place 3-8 is not so much abt which is nicer but which one actually makes me feel any emotion bc i just feel too exhausted for excitement over comebacks or anything really. also minimalism doesnt make me feel anything either. but ill try

3. jungkook’s room

ok ive been staring at a screen w few sleep for too long so ill try to go through my ranking faster bc ive been working on this post for too long, also partially bc i cant focus nd partially bc theres some i just rly dont feel much for but i feel bad for ranking one lower than the other or ranking smth higher when ive talked to someone who dislikes a room i like dghkfdf

but yeah i like jungkooks room! its a very intense blue tht might make you depressed if youre in it too long but again i love how theres multiple items stacked in the bg and intense blue lights, and the ceiling looks like it has soundproof padding. its like youre in a recording studio or at some vaguely nostalgic party of a friend of my mom, who had plants in her home nd rock music nd the tv on and was smoking nd it was a bit dark and mysterious. i like it, it intrigues me a bit nd makes me miss going to concerts. also this pic rly just reminds me of 2008-2010 pop music videos where theres always a party and dj and people are wearing sunglasses or something and theres a dance break at the end

4. yoongi’s room

also blue!! the first time i saw this pic it was bc someone sent it to me to say how ugly they thought the decoration / editing looked w the metallic dripping stuff from the couch and whatnot but i kinda like it :( i like his velvety clothing and the light blue in the rest of the room is really pretty. i like mirror themes when done well nd i like how the reflectiveness shows also in the metallic dripping nd metallic spheres and the mirror hes standing on nd the way light reflects on his clothes and from the lamp. only the lamp feels a bit too much like a contemporary art installation for me nd his room already is a bit too empty for my liking nd i had the feeling when i watched the vid of him walking through the room that there was not much to interact w in the room like it was a bit dull. his voice in the explanation videos made it feel more like a place of peace / solitude rather than boredom or loneliness though.

5. namjoon’s room

ehh i think place 5, 6 and 7 are interchangable at this point. namjoon woulve ranked lowest but i listened to his explanation videos and saw him goof around in today’s video and appreciated it a bit more. the room still looks quite minimalist and not super comfortable, like youre not allowed to touch anything there (which is the same for jin i guess but i dont view that as smth meant to look like a living room). i do like how the wood theme is present throughout each wall nd in various items and w the windows nd use of space it feels a bit inspired by japanese interior design and that that is inspired by his bonsai tree nd love for woodwork, but im not sure. i was actually quite shocked some of his explanations were so short. so yeah i place this 5th bc i like how coherent the theme is but it doesnt feel cozy or inviting nd still very cold to me, maybe bc it looks too expensive or minimalistic in terms of colours.

6. jimin’s room

i like the flowers but also i dont like tiny flowers nd they tend to be the stinkier ones. i kind of like how jimins room feels the most like a grandma one w all the flowers nd offwhite and the lamp and beige i think? but the colours are so muted and if anything it feels like a place for a bridal photoshoot nd im just so bored. i love jimin nd feel bad for ranking a room he curated so low but it rly creates no serotonine in my brain, just melatonine bc im sleepy. i like how the room i obviously quite packed w stuff, but then the washed out colours make everything still look very bleak. hmm. i do like how the flowers reach outside the borders unlike w any of the others’ photos. im about to fall asleep so let me quickly finish this post

7. tae’s room

the picture in the middle behind him is interesting nd i dont know how he made that, nd i do like how he described his room as a place where there would always be enough food for visitors. i know it’s meant to communicate some highbrow, artsy vibe but w the weird editing and lightning nothing looks real in the room he’s in (including himself, like it doesnt even look like hes in the room) and it just looks kitschy instead of artsy. yeah i dont gravitate towards this one, it’s like deep-fried and desaturated at the same time nd i tend to avoid looking at it subconsciously

8. the first room photo

i first posted a long description here why but it disappeared but in short. this photo evokes no emotional response to me other than think of kind of crappy hotel rooms i was in w my parents while on vacation nd we slept in the same room or something nd the beds were awful nd made my moms chronic pain worse. the clothing is very boring and so r the colours of the room. i know bangtan curated stuff but its still the least interesting photo to me, maybe im too depressed to feel anything idk

im sorry this was prob very boring TT_TT i tried my best to make a ranking but i rly dont know nor care as much as i would want to

#asks #trespassers will #rambles #long post

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pervocracy · 5 years

Text

One opinion about almost every episode of Doctor Who that I’ve watched

spoilers, although they’re mostly from like 2005

An Unearthly Child: Whoa, they nailed the theme song right from the get-go!

Rose: The Doctor’s speech about feeling the Earth turning under his feet was chilling, and I think about it a lot in moments later in the series when he’s being goofy and casual.

The End of the World: They spent a lot of money on this one--costumes, effects, even licensed music--to prove to everyone that This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Doctor Who.

The Unquiet Dead: I realize saying “every myth is actually aliens” is kind of the Brand, but this one came off particularly strongly “we wrote a Victorian ghost story but then the boss said it had to be aliens so okay, fine, they’re fuckin’... alien ghosts.”

Aliens of London: “Being the Doctor’s companion will completely destroy your life” is a surprisingly grim running theme in the series. Every companion eventually brings grief to their friends and families, in one way or another.

World War Three: Rose returning to the TARDIS as a conscious decision, bags packed and ready for adventure, is adorable. The show implies that certain people are just made to be companions to the Doctor, and Rose is one of them.

Dalek: It was an interesting choice to introduce the Dalek as sympathetic and pitiful, and at the same time one of the most brutal killers on the show. And at the same time, it’s still a ridiculous-looking thing with a toilet plunger for an arm.

The Long Game: Hey! That’s Simon Pegg! He looks weird with blond hair! Hi Simon Pegg! I’m waving at the TV!

Father’s Day: I only watched this one once. Couldn’t deal with the feelings.

The Empty Child: Stephen Moffat was so good when he wasn’t allowed to take over the whole show so he actually had to write stories with endings!

The Doctor Dances: And what a glorious ending it is! Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once, EVERYBODY LIVES!

Boom Town: The Doctor’s dinner with the Slitheen, and their cold deconstruction of each other’s brutality, is one hell of a scene considering the silliness of the setup.

Bad Wolf: Today on Shit You Did Not Expect: a... The Weakest Link crossover? Really? Really. They play The Weakest Link with a penis-headed robot who blasts people with her laser eyes. And then they’re on Big Brother! Hey! My dad worked on that! I don’t think he was actually part of this episode though.

The Parting of the Ways: Rose doesn’t look or act like she’d make a fearsome demigod. Which makes it much more powerful when she does.

The Christmas Invasion: “Who is this weird new guy? I’ll never get used to him being the Doctor!” -me, for about 5 seconds before falling completely and permanently in love with Ten

New Earth: This one is so much fun! Rose and the Doctor are so adorably playful with each other, and then they get to do some incredibly goofy bodyswap acting, and then even Cassandra gets to have a sweet, humanity-affirming ending.

Tooth and Claw: So you’ve got a Scottish actor who normally fakes an English accent, pretending to be faking a Scottish accent, then pretending to forget to fake a Scottish accent and “slipping” into an English accent again. Meanwhile I can’t even speak with a Massachusetts accent and I was born here.

School Reunion: “I couldn’t bear to watch you grow old and die” is a bullshit excuse for ditching a companion, coming from a guy whose entire personality essentially-dies every time he has a contract dispute or “creative differences.”

The Girl in the Fireplace: “Every time I travel through the time portals, several years pass for Reinette. Too bad I have no pattern recognition abilities!”

Rise of the Cybermen: I’m glad Mickey finally gets an episode where he’s not just a barely-wanted tagalong. He was on the verge of becoming the Xander Harris of this show.

The Age of Steel: Noel Clarke’s “I’m two people” acting is so good! You can see whether he’s Mickey or Ricky in each shot with a glance, just from his facial expression.

The Idiot’s Lantern: ahahaha look at their hair in this episode

The Impossible Planet: I’m glad they came back to the Ood later, because it’s rather unpleasant how the Doctor in this one kinda shrugs off “so these people are keeping slaves, what’re you gonna do, cultural differences and all that.”

The Satan Pit: Making literal Satan the bad guy here is adorable. It’s like something you’d see on 60s Star Trek, but no, it’s happening in our modern CGI-enhanced post-irony Golden Age Of TV world. A man in a spacesuit is yelling at a giant red devil that just growls back at him and it’s all very serious drama. I love this show.

Love & Monsters: This is the one where a girl gets turned into a paving slab but then her boyfriend announces that it’s okay because they’re still having sex. Yeah. That happened.

Fear Her: I think this one’s mostly filler

Army of Ghosts: There’s just way too much going on here. We’ve got ghosts and Cybermen and Torchwood and Daleks and a parallel universe and... anyway I think the concept of using those flimsy paper 3D glasses as a magical item is kind of adorable.

Doomsday: ROSE! ROSE NO! COME BACK! ROOOSE!!!

The Runaway Bride: Catherine Tate is so good! I’m so glad they brought her back!

Smith and Jones: I love that Martha immediately distinguishes herself as a potential companion by being excited instead of terrified that they’ve been teleported to the moon. She doesn’t even know how they have air, but she’s already like “sweet! an Adventure!”

The Shakespeare Code: By theater nerds, for theater nerds, probably insufferable to everyone else, but theater nerds have long been comfortable with that.

Gridlock: It feels a little too Socially Responsible how the Doctor and Martha are immediately and violently anti-drug. This world has patches that bring you magical joy with no apparent side effects, and instead of being curious about it the way they usually are about future technology, they just go straight to “SAY NOPE TO DOPE, KIDS!!!”

Daleks in Manhattan: Having Daleks use the old-school pepperpot design and robot-screamy-voices in the modern series is like putting nipples and a codpiece on the Batsuit in The Dark Knight. Which is to say, it’s brilliant and I love it.

Evolution of the Daleks: too much plot, I’m sleepy

The Lazarus Experiment: I cannot believe multiple adults saw the wig Mark Gatiss wears in this episode and agreed that would be okay.

42: I really like these self-contained episodes that don’t set up any big arcs or prophesies or personal dramas. There’s just a ticking clock, a mystery, a spaceship, and a whole lot of running up and down hallways whilst shouting.

Human Nature: Hey, it’s Jojen Reed as an uncanny psychic child! And Viserys Targaryen as a sadistic upper-class brat!

The Family of Blood: Man, the Doctor really dicked Martha over with this one. “You’re going to be a domestic servant, because you’re black! And I’m going to turn myself into an old-timey racist who doesn’t know who you are! And yet somehow you’re supposed to be in charge of making sure I carry out all my plans!”

Blink: This is a perfect episode of television.

Utopia:💖😍🥰😘 jack harkness i love you 😘🥰😍💖

The Sound of Drums: “Menacing goofiness” is a strange place for an actor to aim, but damn if John Simm doesn’t hit it.

Last of the Time Lords: “I’ve been traveling around the world, fomenting resistance and spreading hope... in the idea that the Doctor is magic and can fix everything by himself. That’s what resistance to fascism is, right? Just throwing all your resources in with a different all-powerful authority-father-savior figure?”

Voyage of the Damned: Giving the Doctor a one-off temporary companion, and expecting people to care about her as much as Rose or Martha, doesn’t really work. “Oh no, she’s dying. Not whatserface. Oh no.”

Partners in Crime: I love that they’re giving the Doctor a companion who doesn’t have any kind of psychosexuromantic entanglement with him, but is really just a friend. I love that they’re giving the Doctor a companion who’s (by actors’ ages, at least) older than him. ...Oh shit, is it bad that these are the same one?

The Fires of Pompeii: “I wish we could save the people of Pompeii, but I am powerless to change this part of history... oh wait, no, I’ll save this one random family on a whim. Guess I could change history after all! Sorry, other 20,000 people who are still getting volcanoed to death!”

Planet of the Ood: “The companion is the Doctor’s conscience” is always true, but Donna really owns it. She spares no time for pretending that “oh but what if the Ood are supposed to be slaves” is an interesting argument.

The Sontaren Strategem: Another one of those “too much plot for me” episodes. I’m a simple man; just give me a monster and a hallway to run down.

The Poison Sky: ditto

The Doctor’s Daughter: It’s weird that they got married in real life. Like, their actual age difference is within the half-plus-seven rule, and she wasn’t even really his daughter daughter on the show, but, like, it’s still a little tiny bit weird.

The Unicorn and the Wasp: I guess if I read Agatha Christie books I would understand some of these references?

Silence in the Library: Holy shit, this one is scary. I don’t hide behind the couch often watching Doctor Who, but... “Hey, who turned out the lights?”

Forest of the Dead: River’s speech about “when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call, everybody lives” is self-indulgent Stephen Moffat hooey and a blatant repeat from “The Doctor Dances” but I’ve got goosebumps anyway.

Midnight: Wow. You don’t really expect to be using the phrase “a gut-punch of an episode” about the same series that was just playing Detective Funtimes With Agatha Christie, but this was a gut-punch of an episode.

Turn Left: I’ve rewatched a lot of these, but I couldn’t watch this one more than once because I felt so sad about Wilfred. Something in his performance is just wrenching.

The Stolen Earth: I couldn’t watch this one more than once because it’s hard to summon up the energy to follow the “let’s throw everything that’s ever happened onto the show into this stew” plotline.

Journey’s End: HOW DARE YOU DO DONNA LIKE THAT. HOW DARE YOU.

The Next Doctor: Hey! That’s not Matt Smith! I thought it was gonna be Matt Smith.

Planet of the Dead: The Doctor without a permanent companion is always an uncomfortable dynamic. Both because he needs a conscience/foil/audience-surrogate, and because otherwise we have to go through the “the Doctor is the perfect boyfriend who always breaks your heart” narrative all over again every damn episode.

The Waters of Mars: I like when the Doctor isn’t a good person. When he gets all arrogant and inhuman and at moments even sinister, that’s far more interesting than when he’s a straightforward hero.

The End of Time: Look, I loved David Tennant’s run on this show. He’s my favorite Doctor and my imaginary boyfriend. If there’s anyone I don’t mind watching get a bit self-indulgent, it’s Ten. But even from this perspective, I think it was not a good idea to let him spend a half hour dying while crying piteously and also somehow touring his entire history on the show. It really was not.

The Eleventh Hour: This feels like the first episode of an entirely new show. There’s very little in characters or plotlines (or writers or producers) connecting it to anything that happened before. The sense of a fresh start is nice, but this literally is not the same show I enjoyed before.

The Beast Below: Oh. It’s a space whale. That’s cool I guess. This show is okay and everything, but there’s no way I would have really gotten into it if I’d started watching here.

Victory of the Daleks: Upon reading the Wikipedia summary of this episode, I realized that I had, in fact, watched it.

The Time of Angels: “Blink” was, as I said, perfect. But not because the Angels are the greatest enemy ever devised; they’re creepy and all, but most of the fun in “Blink” comes from the meticulously satisfying construction of the time loops. Taking that element out, and just making the Angels into generic boogeymen, was a terrible idea.

Flesh and Stone: Oh god, there’s so many mediocre Eleven episodes. Don’t get me wrong, Matt Smith is great. I don’t blame him. But I’m just not feeling the energy to go through every one of these damn things anymore.

[...]

Let’s Kill Hitler: This is the one that finally defeated me. I wasn’t really offended, just... tired. Things had gotten so wrapped up in complicated portentous chosen-savior-of-everything plots and we couldn’t have even one episode anymore that was just a normal time travel adventure. I think about halfway through here, I gave up on Doctor Who.

Oh well. There’s still time to come back to it if I want. And we’ll always have “Blink.”

#doctor who #long post #looooooong post #longest post

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arianadevareux · 4 years

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Alright, well since you’re alright with it. Here’s what I did for the wife’s. I put two based on my birthday as an example. I put it under both. You know honestly, I’ve always joked about making chocolate or coffee for a living instead of college. But, hey side stuff are good too. Maybe I’ll try it out sometime though when I have more money and time

2005 Wonka:

‘Lovely Mio Amore’ Big Red velvet heart shaped candies w/ fudge,dark chocolate, marshmallow fluff,&butterscotch center. Melts in your mouth after each bite. Really increases the serotonin, cause its supposed to make you feel giddy/happy all over. In other words, to Willy, the relationship is always filled w/ sweet&silly moments. So for his 1st candy for her he wanted it to be meaningful since not many people have ever made him that happy before. 2nd: ‘Golden Starshines’ 3DStar molds w/ 4 flavors. Honey, Butterscotch, Caramel, &White Chocolate.Along w/ popping pink fudge in your mouth. It meant how their love was really sweet&felt like fireworks all the time

(Both 2005&1971): (Made some based on her birthday,if it’s a holiday it revolves around that. So I’m using mine as an example for this one).2 special treats for St. Patrick’s Day. One cause it’s for the holiday&two it’s (Y/N)’s bday. 1st one is big mint chocolate four leaf clovers that melt in in your mouth&leave a minty breath. 2nd is like a cake pop w/ candy. Pot of gold candy cake pop w/ a rainbow sticking out on top&mini clovers decorates on the pot. Cake is chocolate dyed green&lemon cream center (btw this doesn’t mean you have to make the readers bday the same as mine, I was just trying to make holiday birthday example)

1971: 1st: ‘Dream Clouds’ there’s some dye In here, lavender&blue. It’s made in a cloud mold. First, the outside is all marshmallow fluff, then blue&purple cotton candy&a blueberry chocolate core. It’s simple, but pretty&feels/tastes fluffy. The wife was like one dream come true for Wonka, before married. It felt like he was always up in the clouds. So he made this. 2nd: ‘Sweet Mon Amour’ Similar to depp Wonkas heart candies. Same character, different universe. Similar candies. This one is a white chocolate bar, but the squares are replaced w/ purple and pink hearts designs. Each heart has a different filling. They vary between strawberry, marshmallow fluff, chocolate, peanuts, cherry, and lemon. ~Hatter anon

Nice! Tbh you could do that as a side thing. Or if you ever want to start a business, you could do a coffee shop with chocolates. But definitely try out making a few things when you can!

Aww, that sounds precious. I love the meaning behind it. Also, of course, anything marshmallow fluff gets my vote. Golden Starshines sound adorable. Popping fudge is a fun touch!

Even if her birthday isn’t around a holiday, it could be a seasonal theme or something. Aw yiss, mint chocolate. Omg candy cake pop, hell yeah. I love it. And lemon yaasss.

Dream Clouds sound incredible. I looove sugary sweets. I generally prefer them over rich sweets because I”m a big ol bitch and rich sweets hurt my stomach. That’s adorable! Oooh I love the different varieties with those!

#hatter anon #anon message

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joyofcrime-elinorhigh · 5 years

Text

The Legend of Frosty the Snowman REVIEW:

Hello there everybody. My name is JoyofCrimeArt and welcome to the third review in my month long "Deviant-cember." special event. If you where here last time you would of seen my review of the 1992 holiday specials "Frosty Returns." But as I said at the end of that review, we're not done with Frosty the Snowman just yet. Because there's not just one, but two Frosty the Snowman sequels that came out after the fact that weren't created by Rankin-Bass. One was "Frosty Returns" and the other was 2005's "The Legend of Frosty the Snowman." which we are going to talk about today!

"The Legend of Frosty the Snowman," as previously stated, was a 2005 special direct to DVD special created by Classic Media and Studio B productions, and was designed to be a "broad strokes reboot." of Frosty the Snowman. Other then that, there's not much history behind this special other then the fact that they use to show this all the time on Cartoon Network when I was younger. How does this special hold up to the other entries in the Frosty mythos? Well, let's dive in and find out. The special opens up in the dark and creepy attic of an old man... ...Not the best place to start. All jokes aside, this is where we meet our celebrity narrator, this time played by Burt Reynolds. He introduces us to the story, just like all of the past narrators have done in these specials, and he has an advantage over Johnathan Winters because he is not a scary gremlin man. So points to this special right off the back. The special starts with a series of chained up crates being magically opened, with Frosty the Snowman's hat locked inside. The hat, free from it's shackles, flies out the window. The narrator tells us that Frosty the Snowman always goes where he is needed. We then get to see our main character of the special, Tommy Tinkerton, (played by Kaith Soucie.) Tommy, and his brother Charlie, are woken up by there father Mr. Tinkerton, and told to get ready for school. Now might be a good time to talk about these three characters. Tommy, our main character, is rather bland. Now granted the main kid characters in all of the Frosty special where bland, with Holly from "Frosty Returns." being the closest to not bland, but still not quite making it. So Tommy being the boring "generic kid" character isn't really that much of a surprise. Tommy's brother, Charlie, on the other hand I actually kinda like. He's the stereotypical "big brother bully" character but with the added twist of, rather than being a delinquent he's actually a of a stickler for the rules, which is an interesting combination of traits that you don't see that much of in characters. It gives him a bit of depth, or at least by Frosty the Snowman standards, which is not much. And then we have Tommy's dad, Mr. Tinkerton. He is the mayor of the town (called Evergreen) and also one of the whitest humans to ever white. This is appropriate because he is voiced by Tom Kenny, who is also one of the whitest people to ever white. This guy is a control freak, to a cartoonish extent. Granted, that's obviously the point of the character, and it's used for comedy, but still. It's a bit insane. He goes outside to inspect the city, I guess, and he goes to make sure that the sun rises at exactly six am. (Which by the way is frickin' earily for the sun to rise in winter.) He licks a sidewalk (to test how clean it is.) And then he "convinces." a flower to be in bloom despite it being winter. This Mayor is frickin' nutty to say the least. He then goes back inside his house to "inspect." his family before the kids go off to school. Now I know this is all suppose to be played for laughs, and Tom Kenny's voice does make it much harder to find this scene terrifying, but all I'm saying was that if you put these scenes and played them off a little different it would come off as a LOT more cultish. It kinda comes off like that one dystopian future run by Ned Flanders in the fifth Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode.

(Look at those eyes. Those are eyes of true fear.) Mr. Tinkerton inspects his kids and they they go off in there single file line off to school. The narrator tells us that the kids in this town never stepped out of line, unless it was on accident. Then as there walking they all slip on some ice, causing a massive chain reaction causeing Tommy to knock over a mailbox, which makes a car swerve into a fire hydrant. The fire hydrant burst releasing a massive flood of water that instantly freezes, causing the kids to slip more until they crash into city hall. And do you want to know what the messed up thing is? The special heavily implies that it was FROSTY who did this. Because right as Tommy is getting up after crashing into the wall of city hall, he see's the hat fly by and land on the school statue. And this special establishes that in this incarnation Frosty can use magic without being built, because the hat itself is sapient and magical in it's own right. And Frosty's consensus is held there. What the heck Frosty, what did you do all of that for? To show them about non conformity by forcing them out of there line? I mean yeah, you did that, but you also nearly killed these kids! And what about that guy driving the car? He easily could of died, and now he has to ride the bus everyday to work! Frosty is just a being of pure Chaos!

FRICKIN' REK'D SON! (Part Deuce!) Tommy goes and talks to his nerdy black best friend, Walter. (Cause you have to have a nerdy black best friend. "Danny Phantom" taught me so.) And talks about how he's going to ask out his crush, Sara, out. Walter teases Tommy, saying that he says that everyday by Tommy tells him that "There's something different about today." Tommy makes it to school where he sees the flying hat again, and tries to tell the school principal, Principal Pankley, about it. Unfortunately for Tommy the head fly's off before the principal can see it, and he yells at Tommy telling him to get to class. In the classroom we see that things are just as strict and cultish as they are outside. It seems that Principal Pankley is just as strict and uptight as Tommy's dad is, only he's a lot meaner about it. He also seems to stalk the classrooms watching the students just to make sure that the students are acting in line. Shouldn't he have like, paperwork to do, or something? Tommy once again see's the Frosty hat, this time outside the school window. But since hes in class there isn't much he can do about it. The school day ends Tommy tries to talk to his crush, Sara, but he strikes out. We then cut to Tommy's house at dinner time where Tommy and his brother compete in an...table etiquette themed game show? WTF! (Which, by the way, stands for "What the Frosty." in this context.")

So yeah, just in case we haven't drove home the point that Mr. Tinkerton is a frickin' maniac, this scene is here to reiterate that this guy likes rules. Tommy's brother Charlie dominates the game and Mr. Tinkerton ends up giving him a number one pin for winning. While this scene is...dumb, it does sort of serve a point. Shocking, I know, but hear me out. This scene shows, in a kinda subtle way, that Mr. Tinkerton as a lot more in common with Charles than he does with Tommy, showing a bit of a parental favoritism. I wish the special dove more into this, but sadly it does not. After dinner, Tommy is seen looking out the window and the hat appears to him one more time. This time Frosty shows off one of his many new superpowers. This version of Frosty can create an astral projection of himself, cause why the heck not, am I right? I mean if Elsa can use her ice powers to somehow make herself a dress in "Frozen" then I don't see why Frosty can't use his ice powers to make an astral projection of himself. Tommy see's the astral snowman beckoning to him, but Tommy tells Frosty that he can't go outside because he's scared of getting in trouble and disappointing his father. This is very different from the most realistic response of "OH MY GOD! THAT FLYING HAT CREATED AN ASTRAL IMAGE OF A SNOWMAN OUTSIDE MY WINDOW! WHAT THE ACTUAL F#&K!" But I guess somethings never change with these specials. (I swear I think the traffic cop is the only one who ANY of the Frosty specials to actually react to Frosty!)

So the hats like "Ugh, whatever, screw this kid." and flies off to find a kid who's more willing to be a main character! So Frosty's hat flies over to Tommy's best friend Walter's house instead. We see a bit into Walter's home life. We see that Walter is a very nervous child with a very loud and demanding mother, who Walter is kind of afraid of. Walter see's Frosty's hat tap on his window and...wait, what the heck is wrong with that map behind Walter?

(So is that weird land mass in the lower right hand corner suppose to be Australia? Or is this confirming that this special actual exist after some kind of nuclear Armageddon ravages the land and ends up reshaping the continents #CARTOONCONSPIRACY) Anyway Walter opens the window and grabs on the hat, only for the hat to fly off with Walter holding on to the hat. Taking Walter flying over the city. Tommy see's this and opens the window asking where Walter is going. Walter response that he doesn't know. Tommy then proceeds to do nothing to help his friend and is nowhere to be seen for the rest of the scene. Man between Tommy and Holly I think there might just be a tradition of the main character of Frosty specials to be massive jerks to there friends. So after Frosty kidnaps this child he then proceeds to bring him to the middle of the forest. #happyholidays. Walter admits that the flight across the city was fun a proceeds to put the hat on a snowman, thus reviving Frosty the Snowman, this time played by Bill Fagerbakke. In case you don't know Bill Fagerbakke is the voice actor of Patrick Star in "Spongebob Squarepants" and his voice really works for Frosty in this special (Though it can get a bit grating when he yells, though luckily that's not that big of a problem here because Frosty actually whispers a lot of his lines in this special.) As typical at this point Walter only seems slightly surprised to see a talking snowman. Though to be fair he did just fly across the city riding a hat, so by comparison I guess this isn't really that out of the ordinary. So Frosty shows Walter about all the fun one can have in the snow when there not to concerned about rules and safety and the like. They have a snowball fight, the race down a hill, Frosty makes it snow (Showing off more of his reality warping Godlike powers.) And then Frosty walks Walter home. Walter talks about how he's scared to go inside, because he's scared of how his mother is going to react. Frosty ask why Walter would be scared of his own Mom, and asks if Walter's mom is some kind of hairy monster or something. Walter tells Frosty that his mom is just a normal lady and Frosty wonders why Walter would be scared of a normal lady. This gives Walter the bravery to go inside his house. This is what I really like about this iteration of Frosty. He manages to combine both the dim witted nature of the original Rankin-Bass Frosty with the wisdom and insight of the "Frosty Returns" version of Frosty. He comes off as an idiot, but he actual ends up having some sage advice for the kids, weather on accident or on purpose. In fact, do you want to know what this version of Frosty the Snowman reminds me of? A better version of "Uncle Grandpa." Think about it for a second. He's a magical entity who shows up out of nowhere who only interacts with kids, and takes them on adventures where they learn about themselves while also acting kind of like an idiot. It's a pretty apt comparison! I remember at one point the creator of Uncle Grandpa said this during an interview with the website Cartoon Brew about the character of Uncle Grandpa.

He talks about how at the end of the day you don't know if Uncle Grandpa is an idiot or if it's all really planned. The thing is though, is that when you watch "Uncle Grandpa" it's made pretty frickin' clear that he's an idiot. We see him when he's not with kids and he acts like an idiot there to. However, I feel like this version of Frosty fits this description better. It is kept vague. There is a bit of mystery around Frosty, and how much he knows. You really don't know if his advice comes from genuine wisdom, or ignorance or both, and that's what I really like about this version of him. So Walter walks inside and when his mother asks him where he was, he just says that he was "out having fun." and walks off. This disobedience causes his mother to faint. The next day Walter goes to school and, because he stayed out after curfew, is considered "the bad boy." of the school and everybody takes noticed. Including Principal Pankley and Tommy's dad. And because Walter stayed up past curfew, Principal Pankley decides to give him detention, which is...way beyond his jurisdiction. A principal can't punish a student for something they did after school. Also why is Tommy's dad here? He's the mayor! While he may have some kind of ability to punish Walter for breaking curfew he has no power to punish him in the school. Evergreen seems to be pretty much a dictatorship where the mayor and the principal have the power to do whatever the heck they want. During lunch Charlie ends up threatening Walter, warning him that if he keeps up this delinquency he'll be sorry. Unfortunately Charlie pounds the table, knocking Walter's food off it, and the food lands all over the principal and Charlie ends up getting detention too. Mr. Tinkerton ends up removing Charlies number one pin. Mr. Tinkerton and Principal Pankley ask Walter where he was the following night and Walter tells them that he was hanging out with a talking snowman. Mr. Tinkerton has a weird reaction to this, but Principal Pankley just says that that's nonsense. While all of this is going on, Tommy tries to stalk er, I mean "follow" Sara into the forest so he can tell her how he feels about her. But unfortunately for Tommy, he chickens out yet again. We see that Sara is building a model city out of snow in the forest because she dreams of being an urban planner. But her mom does not want her to become an urban planner, because even urban development is to much fun for the people of this town. But then, for like the ten billionth time in this special so far, Tommy see's Frosty's hat. Only this time he actually decides to chase the hat down. The hat ends up flying into the local library. Tommy runs around trying to find the hat only to trip on a secret lose panel in the library, leading to some kind of secret passage way. Okay, now here is when things get a bit confusing. Even though we just saw the hat fly into the library we immediately see a fully formed Frosty outside the school window. (Which by the way how is he fully formed. Who built him the body this time? Did the hat just fly all the way back to where he left his body before showing up?) Charlie and Walter see him and leave detention through BECAUSE THERE'S NO TEACHER WATCHING THEM! (like I know they locked the door, but they where still able to leave the room through some off screen other door I guess!) and they go outside to go see Frosty. They goof around and Charlie begins to warm up to Frosty. Then we cut right back to Tommy, meaning either this special is telling events out of order or that the scene with Walter and Charlie took place in exactly zero seconds. He's still at the top of the stairs that he started descending in the last scene! He goes down the stares through the secret tunnel in the library where we see Frosty's hat again! This leaves only three options, either A.) The scene with Walter and Charlie takes place after this scene, and the specials telling these events out of order. (Which the special gives no other hints of.) B.) Frosty entered the library (in hat form.) Then left the library and met up with Charles and Walter (in snowman form) and then came back to the library (in hat form again.) all in the span of time it would take Tommy to walk down the steps. Which would be like a couple minutes at MOST! Or C.) THERE ARE TWO FROSTY'S #CARTOONCONSPIRACYAGAIN! Anyway Tommy ends up finding a comic book in this library. This comic book happens to be a comic book ABOUT Frosty the Snowman, telling of his origins! (D-Don't ask why. Just roll with it.) We learn of the story of a small little boy who is the son of a magician (a magician who you may recognize if you've seen the original Frosty the Snowman, though they change his name.) This kid grew up never believing in magic since, being the son of a magician, knew how all the tricks where done. This was until he ended up putting his father's hat onto a snowman, and the snowman came to life. But after his first meeting with the snowman was unable to find Frosty ever again, and assumed he made it up. It's a cute re-imaging of the origin story all things considered. Though in some ways it does seems like a bit of a self insert fanfiction, replacing Karen with this new kid. But whatever, it's neat. But then Mr. Tinkerton enters the library and the librarian informs him that his son is here. Tommy quickly runs out of the secret basement and meeting up with his father. Mr. Tinkerton tells Tommy that he needs to rely on Tommy to help him keep order, and tell him if any more mischief comes up. He also tells Tommy that all of his rules are there to make sure that people don't have any unrealistic expectations when it comes to things like magic. Mr. Tinkerton gives Tommy the number one pin and gives him a hug. It's a nice scene that puts Tommy in the situation where he has to pick between his father's acceptance and what is actually the right thing to do. (Also I think the voice acting really sells it. This special might not be that "good" but it does have some great voice talent.) That following night we see Sara, working on her piano scales, which she does not seem to find much enjoyment in. She tells her mother this, but she does not seem to care. That, or course, is when Frosty shows up. Sara mentions that nobody seems to listen to her and Frosty says it might be because she's talking to loudly. Because to paraphrase Frosty "The quieter you talk, the more attention you have to pay just to hear what your saying." See, this is what I like about this version of Frosty. He has this air of wisdom to him. It's a good lesson, as the loudest people aren't necessarily the ones who you should be listening to. Sara says she wants to learn how to ice skate and Frosty obliges. He demonstrates more of his Godlike powers my making THE FRICKIN' MOON SHINE ON THEM, MAKING IT THERE OWN PERSONAL SPOTLIGHT! (Why can Frosty control the moon? This goes way beyond the power of ice and snow. Also Frosty vs Elsa "Death Battle" please.)

(Or maybe Frosty is just trying to activate his Oozaru Form.) The next day at school it seems that all of Tommy's friends have turned against him because, now that he has Mayor Tinkertons number one pin, they believe him to be the enemy. Tommy mentions that Frosty's powers steam from his hat and walks off, unsure if he should chose his friends or his father to follow (even though his friends are kinda being jerks here, in all honesty.) That night Tommy walks into his family room to see his mother scrap booking when he see's a photo of the boy from the comic book. It turns out that the boy from the comic book, the one who originally created Frosty was none other than...Tommy's father.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvcoly2i-3M

(Except, y'know, it was pretty dang obvious.) The next morning Mr. Tinkerton goes outside to do his inspection and nobody is listening to him. The sun refuses to rise at 6 am (rising at 6:01 instead. Which I think is less a sign of disobedience and more just a sign of the season changing.) and nobody is following the rules. Even the adults, for some reason. Even though later we see that the adults are just as upset about the disobedience as Mr. Tinkerton is.

(Here's something my older brother pointed out. This special is basically "Footloose with Frosty." It's Frostloose!) Anyway this mild chaos makes Mr. Tinkerton spiral even further into his madness. Principal Pankley goes up to him and tells Mr. Tinkerton that he does not have what it takes to quell this rebellion, and so Principal Pankley decides to take matters into his own hands. Pankley ends up seeing Frosty while he was spying on the kids playing in the woods. (Which sounds a lot more eff'd up now that I right that sentence down.) and decides to take action. You see throughout the special Walter has been getting progressively more and more jealous of the other kids for stealing his time with Frosty, to the point to where he kinda becomes that clingy girlfriend type who always wants you to themselves. Principal Pankley see's this and tell's Walter that if he wants to have some time with Frosty all by himself he should go after dark when there less people around, and Principal Pankley agrees to chaperone the excursion since it's set after curfew. Walter ends up agreeing to the arrangement, even though this entire special has made it really clear that Principal Pankley is even more of a rule freak than Mr. Tinkerton is, and has made it pretty clear that he would never do something this nice to anybody ever. Then, in case things weren't out there enough Principal Pankley decides to basically just, declare himself mayor of the town, in order to more efficiently take down the menace of Frosty the Snowman. Y'know I don't think a snowman running around is really worthy of bring out this kind of marshal law. And of course everybody in the town just kinda rolls with it, because why wouldn't they.

That night Tommy is reading the comic book, trying to looks for some kind of a solution when suddenly some more pages of the story are magically reveled to him. The books shows that the reason that Frosty never returned to Mr. Tinkerton as a kid was because another, jealous child had found the hat and locked it up. And that kid happened to be Principal Pankley! And the comic also reveled that Walter was at the lake with Principal Pankley right now. Thanks magic comic book for waiting this long give give Tommy the answers he needed. If you just had all your pages from the start maybe we could of avoided this, but no, you had to wait till the very last minute give us all the information we needed, because you wanted to be dramatic! Also how come Frosty waited this long to leave the trunk that Principal Pankley locked him up in? I mean he just kinda broke out of the box at the beginning of the special. It's not like anyone let him out. Why did it take twenty years to escape? But whatever. We see that Walter is out in the middle of the woods...at night..with Principal Pankely...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgJYTeBynqA

And Walter is skating with Frosty. (Principal Pankley is hiding behind a tree so Frosty doesn't see him.) But while there skating the thin ice breaks and Frosty ends up falling into the water. What would of happened if the ice didn't break? This plan isn't very thought out at all. After Frosty melts Principal Pankley grabs the hat and leaves laughing. Later all the kids have noticed that Frosty stopped showing up, and everybody assumes that it was Tommy who got rid of him. The think this on the ground that Tommy never spent any time with him, he has Mr. Tinkerton's number one pin, and he would have the knowledge on how to destroy him because he mentioned knowing his origin earlier. Principal Pankley begins to revel in his new found power. But Tommy decides that he has stop being scared and do whats right and save Frosty! He get's Walter to confess to his accidental role in Frosty's destruction and the hatch a plan to bring him back. He shows the comic to all the other kids and gets back to there good graces and then they storm to school to retrieve Frosty's hat. (Which is just in a frickin' glass case in the middle of the school where everyone can see it. Cause that'll stop the hat that broke out of like six chained up trunks.) Principal Pankley chases the kids back to the frozen pond where they engage in a snow themed chase and snowball fight that is way less epic then the specials says it is. Everyone in town hears the commotion (because the glass case had an alarm.) and goes to the pond as well. The kids rebuild Frosty the F#&k Boi and all the adults see Frosty for themselves, including Mr. Tinkerton. He and Frosty reconnects and Tommy gives the pin back to his father. Frosty ends up hitting Walter's mother and an entire snowball fight with all the kids and adults break out as all the adults learn the error of there ways. As for Principal Pankley...

(Okay that doesn't happen, but let me have my version dang it!) And the special reveals the shock twist. That Tommy ends up growing up to become...Burt Reynolds! Er, I mean the narrator. The narrator is a grown up Tommy. I like the twist, making the narrator have more of a point then just being some random guest star. Though it is a bit weird that the narrator isn't some kind of horrid uncanny valley version of Bruce Willis. It just feels like it's breaking Frosty tradition. Oh, and we learn that Tommy ended up marring Sara, and I definitely...don't care. Oh and what happens to Frosty? Um...In don't know. They never really say what happens to him once the winter ends. Also they never really say what happens to Principal Pankley. I guess he's still the principal? And will continue to make life for the student miserable at school? I dunno, who cares? The special is over now. So that was "The Legend of Frosty the Snowman." is it any good? Well, probably not, but it has some good parts. The voice cast is pretty good, including Burt Reynolds, who has a really good voice that adds a lot of gravitas to the narrator. (Also Bert Reybnolds sings, which is probably something that you won't here in Dukes of Hazard.) The animation is okay, kinda generic looking but they kinda make up for it by having a lot of nice colors, with lots of blues and whites. Also I really like this version of Frosty. I don't know if I like him more or less than the "Frosty Returns" version of him (as Bill Fagerbakke loud and oafish sounding voice he gives Frosty can get a bit grating at times, like I said previously, but It's prety good for like 90-95 percent of the film) I still think the voice is a perfect fit for what there doing with this version of Frosty, there are just a couple of times where it sounds a bit to much like Patrick Star yelling. (By the way, I like how this special has Bill Fagerbakke still being friends with Tom Kenny.) I love the idea of Frosty being this world traveler and I think this special does a good job combing elements from both the original and the "Frosty Returns" incarnation. It's a good reboot even if it's not the best story. Unfortunately the film has a lot of problems to. Most of the kids are fairly generic. Charlie and Walter are kinda interesting but Sara and Tommy are both rather bland. Tommy has a good conflict in the story, and a good arc, but outside of that he's just a generic kid. And there love story felt very tacked on, like I think they only speak to each other a couple of times in the whole movie and they don't have any chemistry. We don't get a reason on why Tommy likes her other than "cause I'm the main character and she's the token girls so I guess we're suppose to be together! Also the story is pretty dumb and full of plot holes. They go to cartoonish lengths to show how uptight the adults are but it doesn't come off as funny. It's just another 'fight the establishment." story that we've seen many times before. Also Principal Pankley, while having some goofy and amusing moments is nowhere near as fun of a villain as Mr. Hinkle or Mr. Twitchell. Also this special is sixty six minutes long and it can be a bit of a drag by the end. They probably could of cut it down to forty four if they cut out some of the more filler-y scenes. So do I recommend this special? Well, it depends on who you are. I think you can tell by reading this review if it's something that would be up your alley or not. It's dumb, cheesy and kind of bland but there are some creative elements in it that might warrant you checking it out. It available on Netflix and on DVD if you are interested. So I hoped you liked my review. It's a bit longer than I was expecting but what are you going to do? Have you seen "The Legend of Frosty the Snowman?" and if you did what do you think of it. Tell me in the comments. I think discussion is a great way to never fall into a echo chamber so I'd love to start a discussion. Where does it rank with the other Frosty special? And what are some of your favorite Christmas specials that not that many people talk about? Do you have any ideas for things for me to review in the future? Leave all of that or any other thoughts in the comments down bellow and feel free to fav and follow if you liked the review. As you can hopefully see I put a lot of thought and time into so I would be very appreciative. I'll be back next Friday for the finale of "Deviant-cember." with the "2016 year in REVIEW!" Hopefully see you guys then and have a great holiday. (I do not own any of the images or videos in this review all credit goes to there original owners.)

https://www.deviantart.com/joyofcrimeart/journal/The-Legend-of-Frosty-the-Snowman-REVIEW-652910204 DA LINK

#The Legend of Frosty the Snowman #Frosty the Snowman #Christmas #Review #2000's

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rosalyn51 · 6 years

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Matthew Goode: ‘Lord Snowdon was a nightmare: charming then disgusting’

The outspoken actor is rising in the world — from Downton Abbey to playing Princess Margaret’s husband in The Crown

The Times November 25, 2017

When I interviewed Lord Snowdon 11 years ago for this paper he was much offended by our photographer’s assistant wearing a cap inside his house. It was evidently a breach of etiquette and, I am pretty sure, of the respect he felt due one of Britain’s leading photographers — and a former husband of Princess Margaret. The encounter ended with a ticking-off and Snowdon sneeringly hanging his cap up for him.

Now I am sitting in a London hotel room in front of the actor playing Snowdon in season two of Netflix’s The Crown. And Matthew Goode is wearing a hat, probably the one he has in ITV’s The Wine Show, the programme in which he and his mate Matthew Rhys josh and gush over vintages brought to them in a “hilltop Italian villa” — a for-real version of Brydon and Coogan’s The Trip. The bibulous old rogue Snowdon would have appreciated the wine and the banter, but what would he have said about his future impersonator’s ever-on hat?

“He was a nightmare,” says Goode, who admits to rather liking Snowdon. “I spoke to one of the guys who used to help him when he was a photographer, and he said, ‘I can’t use the expletive, but it describes an area of a woman’s body — that’s who he was.’ It was so annoying. He could be charming and brilliant, then in two seconds’ time behave like the most disgusting person in the entire world.”

Lord Snowdon and Princess Margaret in 1960 HULTON ARCHIVE /GETTY IMAGES

Snowdon was 76 when I met him and although he had been divorced from Margaret for nearly 30 years, he still behaved like minor royalty. His servants, I noted, called him m’lud. In the period depicted in The Crown, however, Snowdon was New Britain on the march, storming the palace gates to modernise the monarchy. That early model, the pre-peerage Tony Armstrong-Jones, might even have admired Goode’s hat.

Having once compared Margaret to a Jewish manicurist (he was part Jewish himself), he would certainly have enjoyed Goode’s outspokenness, a trait that has got the actor into trouble in interviews before — which may be why his publicist is sitting behind me. She keeps her counsel, however, probably having already realised that Goode’s chance of appearing in the next honours list is about as likely as The Crown ushering in a republic.

A file of background notes passed on by The Crown’s producers persuaded Goode that Snowdon’s faults were sourced in an unhappy childhood. His mother, Anne Messel, showed him little affection, referring to him as her “ugly son”, doling out her love instead to the two boys from her second, longer-lasting marriage to an earl. He was sent to boarding school at eight and at 16, while at Eton, contracted polio (there is a touching moment in The Crown when he hides his stick when Margaret turns up at his studio). Anne, rather than nurse him at home, packed him off to Liverpool Royal Infirmary, but she never visited him.

“Exactly what that kind of damage does to a child I have no idea, but emotionally and psychologically, quite a lot, I would imagine,” says Goode. “I think it’s why he married Princess Margaret. I think he did it to please his mother rather than himself.”

Demonstrating that he was good enough to marry into royalty? “It’s far more complicated than that, I’m sure, but it’s one of the solutions.”

The Snowdons were soon into an 18-year marriage notable for its private rowing and public putdowns. Yet, says Goode, the royal family loved their new recruit and always blamed Margaret for any trouble. “He was terribly funny as well. So with this incredibly acerbic, nasty, vitriolic, spiteful side comes this flamboyant, wonderfully debonair, extremely funny, witty man.”

The pair, he summarises, were “very charismatic, very smart and vile”, but what we can be sure of was that the sex between them was spectacularly good — although not good enough to dissuade their lusty libidos from straying beyond marriage. Soon both were having affairs. Within weeks of the marriage, another woman, Camilla Fry, had given birth to Snowdon’s illegitimate daughter, sired, the show suggests, during a three-in-a-bed encounter with her and her bisexual husband, Jeremy.

Lord Snowdon and Princess Margaret in The Crown ALEX BAILEY /NETFLIX

“When I first met Noo,” Goode says, referring to Vanessa Kirby, who plays Margaret, by her nickname, “I was quite terrified because I was a fan of the first series. I was a little star-struck, I suppose, and I thought it might make for uncomfortable love scenes, but we ended up just finding it hilarious. It was a really good giggle. She’s brilliant. She’s really dynamic as an actress and really fun to work with because she’ll bat it back. She listens, really listens, and responds.”

Perhaps it is because of their rapport that they manage to convey how alike the princess and her parvenu husband were. They were control freaks (that cap business) and poisonous to those who would not be controlled. They were rebels, but also lovers of status. As Goode points out, Armstrong-Jones may have been the first commoner in 40 years to marry the daughter of a monarch, but he was also dead posh. In fact, Goode’s dialect coach encouraged him to “dial back” the vowels, lest people found them confusing.

Since his breakthrough role as wealthy Tom in Woody Allen’s Match Point in 2005, and certainly after his Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited three years later, Goode has played mainly posh boys. He was brought up in Devon the son of a geologist and his wife, a nurse, but did go to a private day school. Yet Goode is not quite acting aristocracy and since this cannot be because of his talent, or his looks — dark hair, blue eyes, 6ft 2in — this may be something to do with his habit of speaking his mind. In an interview in 2010 he complained about being left with “nowhere to go” by the director of Brideshead. When Tom Ford’s excellent A Single Man came out, he criticised the Weinsteins for featuring Julianne Moore rather than him with Colin Firth in the advertising, thus downplaying the central gay relationship. In 2013 he said he had been working “a lot of scale”, meaning the minimum rate.

Then, on This Morning last year, he said he did not think the modern Bond films were working as well as the old ones. The papers, which had tipped him as Daniel Craig’s successor, declared he had blown his chances.

“I’m way over the hill, darling, what are you talking about?” he responds, although he is 39 and only a few years older than Craig when he started. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way.” What he meant was that there could be two Bond franchises, one contemporary Bond and another set in the Sixties. “It’s just an idea. But apparently you can’t have an opinion.”

Recent years have been kinder to him professionally. In 2014 he joined Downton Abbey as Henry Talbot, the racing diver who sped off with Lady Mary. Around the same time he won a regular gig on The Good Wife in America. The Wine Show is about to return to ITV, with Goode joined by a new drinking buddy, James Purefoy. There are, of course, still disappointments. Cast as a morphine-addicted ex-public schoolboy in Agatha Christie’s Ordeal by Innocence, Goode now finds that the three-parter has been pulled from the BBC’s Christmas schedules after sexual allegations against his co-star Ed Westwick (who robustly denies them).

Matthew Goode LARRY BUSACCA /GETTY IMAGES

Goode says there are two ways of looking at it. The first is that the BBC has spared the cast some awkward interview questions. “But some would also say that they should have stood by Ed. Possibly. I mean, I don’t know. I’m not the controller of the BBC.”

So, is he in favour of the postponement? “I’m not really in favour of anything because I don’t have to make that decision. I believe you’re innocent until proven guilty.”

But has the BBC prejudged the matter by pulling the show? “No, not now, because there are three allegations now.”

Goode has lived with the mother of his three children, Sophie Dymoke, for 12 years. When she became pregnant with their first daughter, she gave up her life in the fashion industry in New York. He was thrilled to be able to return with her to film The Good Wife, but by then her heart was no longer in her career. Is he guilty about that?

“Of course I am. Of course I am. She has to put up with living with some f***wit who doesn’t really live in reality occasionally and has some slight psychological problems occasionally through work. She’s retrained as an interior designer and she’s so talented at it.”

What psychological problems? “Well, this [show] is part of it. If you tie all of your hopes to the net product of your work, then you’re going to get depressed because sometimes you feel like you’re working really well and then you watch it and you go, ‘I am terrible.’ I don’t watch my stuff any more.

I assure him he is excellent in The Crown, but it was a one-off gig. Series three will be recast with older actors (he thinks Paul Bettany would be a good choice). “Peter Morgan [the writer] said, ‘I’ve just written the most fantastic argument for Tony and Margaret in series three.’ I was, like, ‘Oh good. What a thrill for the next guy.’ ”

He got the part days after Lord Snowdon died in January this year, 15 years after Margaret. His death avoids any unpleasant collisions in restaurants and Goode hopes that none of his children will want to spit in his face. He reports that Matt Smith was introduced to Prince William at a function before the first series was shown. The prince said he had heard he was playing his grandfather, Prince Philip. “And Matt was, like, ‘Yeah, yeah, anything to say about that?’ And William just said, ‘LEGEND.’ ”

“I think as we come towards where we are now, it will be slightly uneasy and slightly problematic. I think it could open up a few wounds that people are still a little bit grieving over and feeling complicated about. Poor old Charles is probably going to get it in the neck. Maybe it’s a good thing that I’m out of there already.”

In one way, however, Lord Snowdon did members of the royal family a favour. The show’s slogan is that “the crown always wins”. In the Snowdon case, monarchic tradition was unable to prevent Margaret and her husband from divorcing and pursuing happiness with others. Perhaps without their example, Charles, Anne and Andrew might still be all miserably married. The Snowdons were trailblazers!

“Were they the first? They were. Yes, they were! So, the trailblazers. Trailblazers is a word that suits them extremely well,” Goode says enthusiastically.

And for that, let us all take off our caps to Lord Snowdon. The Crown series two is available on Netflix from December 8

Updated Aug 7, 2018 - Matthew Goode is nominated for an Emmy Guest Actor Drama for his performance in The Crown season 2. He will be next seen as Matthew Clairmont in A Discovery of Witches premieres Sept 14 on Sky One. Also The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Aug 10 on Netflix, and Ordeal by Innocence Aug 10 on Amazon Prime.

#matthew goode #matthewgoode #lord snowdon #vanessa kirby #the crown

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