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Monday, October 18, 2010
...as your pathetic reset point betrays you!
Yeah. That's not happening anymore. I narrowly escaped doom by making it up the elevator shaft, and the guy beside me was no so lucky as she teleported him to her before she decided to despawn.
17 comments:
- Gathros said...
fun :P
had something similar last week.
our tank pulled some trash from blood quarter while the healers were afk, so needless the say he died.
We then proceeded to run back to deathbringers rise to safely escape, only to find out the adds happily came thru the portal and slaughtered us there :P
- October 18, 2010 at 8:19 AM
- Nefernet said...
Ahahah !
In my previous guild, we never used the reset function, and we were quite surprised when in our current guild, the first time we went there they told us "Run !" Ugh ???
I told them you can't reset her in heroic (maybe it's not true...) because I don't like running away.
Since, they drag the second dog inside and we have more time to go take the elevator...
- October 18, 2010 at 8:26 AM
- Kae said...
Heroic was resettable, it just wasted one of your 50 attempts :) We traditionally would swap it to normal mode before engaging the last trash mob, thereby not wasting an attempt.
Usually, she despawned as soon as she left her room.
/dragon chow
- October 18, 2010 at 8:32 AM
- Tam said...
Ah yes, the first time we tried this she burst into the room most comically and killed us. I think it might be LoS that makes the difference, rather than distance. So if you all hide behind the butresses, she tends to reset...
- October 18, 2010 at 9:16 AM
We simply reset her like always on hc by running into the gauntlet room (EU servers).
- October 18, 2010 at 9:54 AM
- Kaethir said...
At least the other bugs weren't so bad as to prevent you from even making it to Sindy...
- October 18, 2010 at 10:24 AM
- Kae said...
We did normal mode last night, Kaethir, just to get some drake achievements out of the way for a couple of our newer raiders. It still was a sucky raid night, though, with mods broken and people not used to threat yet (tanks/dps both) or their full class rotations.
We nuked most of the bosses from orbit, when we were able to due to achievement restrictions. We killed Festergut before he even exhaled. Full House was another matter. >_>
- October 18, 2010 at 10:32 AM
- Hana said...
The reset still works, but it's never been 100% guaranteed (at least not with my guild :\). We've had about a half dozen times pre-patch that she didn't reset, but usually she resets.
She did reset for us this past Saturday.
- October 18, 2010 at 5:55 PM
Tonight she didn't reset until she had teleported all 10 of us back to her and had snacks. From the gauntlet room, from other levels, from way back at the ICC entrance. She's nothing if not thorough now...
- October 19, 2010 at 1:59 AM
- Kae said...
Ouch! Sindy is a fickle dragon...
- October 19, 2010 at 8:24 AM
Kae, I'm in need of a cuteness fix, and I'm wondering how River is growing...
::big anime eyes::
Please?? :)
- October 19, 2010 at 10:55 AM
- Beruthiel said...
Kae -
Slightly off topic, but have you been able to get your reskin of DBM to work? I've tried mine twice - only to have it 1) bug DBM out; and 2) cause horrendous lag :(
For now I'm using the "open" bar - as it's similar in style and not too obtrusive, but I miss my reskin!
Additionally, I second a River update! I imagine she's keeping you very busy :)
- October 19, 2010 at 11:22 AM
- Kae said...
Puppy fix fixed. ;)
DamiaUI DBM... still not fixed. /sad Kae. I'm keeping an eye out for an update for the skin; it seems some alterations were made to the dbm template file that were necessary for 4.0. LunarSphere has also not yet updated, and along with GridStatusLifebloom, they make my top three most-anticipated mod updates remaining.
- October 19, 2010 at 2:42 PM
Lol. I love how you're running for your life but have time to take a screenshot <3
Thats true dedication right there, kids ^^
- October 23, 2010 at 8:06 AM
- Kae said...
Chyeah. After kiting through the gauntlet room and looking over my shoulder as a giant undead dargon eats my raid? Totally screenshot time! Autorun ftw.
- October 27, 2010 at 11:43 AM
I've reset her on normal since then with no problem and it seems like the same thing would work on heroic.
We pull the last dragon (Rimefang maybe?) back into that gauntlet room. Then when she spawns, most of the time she doesn't even come at us.
- November 1, 2010 at 10:47 AM
- Sakaki said...
omg I've had the worst luck resetting her. One time she hit me from at the bottom of the elevator, and I was at the top not on the elevator. She's also teleported me to her from the beginning of the instance, and from Suarfang's platform, and just generally killed me if I hung around anywhere near her when she was pulled to reset. After a month or two of getting killed every time we did this. I just hearthed to Dalaran, and flew back. Normally she wasn't reset by the time I got there, so I flew in circles, whee.
With Cata I think she reincarnated as Lord Godfrey in SFK... he teleported me into the hills around SFK and spawned ghouls on me the other day. I haven't been back since ><
- January 24, 2011 at 1:09 PM


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text: Hey, folks. I've been reading for a while, but this'll be my first actual post. I wanted to say a big THANK YOU to Daniel and the folks at EE for the great experience we had. My wife and I came in to the shop when we were in Kirkland visiting family. I had done my homework and narrowed down what I was looking for, but needed to get hands-on to really make the call. We looked at the knives I had picked out, but also a few others, and talked at some length about what I was after in a new knife. Long story short, he pulled down a different style of knife to show me that I hadn't considered, but it turns out was exactly what I was looking for. I ended up choosing two knives - the sabaki knife he showed me and a petty knife that both my wife and I liked the feel of - quite happily. Because we were travelling, I had him ship the knives to me in Texas. The knives came promptly, with sayas that fit amazingly well, and in great shape. Basically, it was an all around great experience. It's one thing to order knives from a website, but no matter how much you read reviews and opinions and descriptions, it doesn't beat talking to people who know what they're doing and getting a feel for the knives yourself.


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Jeunes Volontaires pour l'Environnement organized a regional solar cooking conference August 2006 in Vogan. Over 60 people from Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, and Togo attended, including Mr. Joseph Odey, a leading solar cooking promoter in Nigeria and Vincent Nnanna, who has been teaching solar cooking in Benin for years. Youth groups and women's groups from Togo sent representatives as well. Also attending were Togo's Deputy Minister of Energy and Water, the Attache to the Minister of Environment, and the Prefect of the Vo District. Many people learned to make and use solar cookers and were shown how to use the cookers to pasteurize drinking water. Some of the attendees from outside Togo were happy to take their newly constructed solar cookers back to their home countries.
A parabolic-type solar cooker was assembled and presented to the District Hospital of Vogan. In addition, participants from several countries agreed to form the Network of Solar Actors of West Africa to promote further discussion and to foster the spread of solar technologies in the region. The Togolese Ministries of Energy and Environment sponsored the conference. Additional support was received from Norges Naturvernforbund, a Norwegian nongovernmental organization.
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The competition is fierce when you work at a broadcast news station. You have no friends, and everyone is out for himself or herself.
Pyo Na Ri (Gong Hyo Jin) is a weather forecaster from a humble background. She secures a part-time contract to work at a prestigious broadcast network but soon realizes that petty jealousy and cutthroat competition surrounds her every day at work. Her life becomes even more complicated when Na Ri falls in love with the station's star news anchor, Lee Hwa Shin (Jo Jung Suk), but Hwa Shin's best friend, Go Jung Won (Go Kyung Pyo), falls for her.
Can Na Ri get what she wants both at work and in her personal life?
"Don't Dare to Dream (Jealousy Incarnate)" is a 2016 South Korean drama series directed by Park Shin Woo.
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In every army one model must play the role of the General. This models must be the Character with the highest Leadership in your army, excluding the Battle Standard Bearer and Characters with the Special Rule "Not A Leader". If two (or more) eligible Characters are tied for highest Leadership, you are free to choose which Character is your general. This must be noted on the Army List.
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text:
by Ali Corton
Call me spoiled, but I have been fortunate enough to have lived in a house with a master bathroom since PK. That's pre-kids in our world. Seriously, I have only had to share a bathroom with my darling children on vacation or while visiting family or friends. I confess, I have taken this luxury for granted. It's not just the cleanliness of my own sink, it's the ease and convenience of having all my stuff in one place. Nobody moves it, shares it or spills it. It is mine. All mine.
When we bought our "fixer-upper" nearly 8 years ago it was with the intent that we would eventually get to the master bath project sooner, rather than later. It is the last major project in a house full of them! So when we decided about a month ago to just "go for it" and get the bathroom done, it may not have been as well thought out as I once figured. Yes, the design, layout, contractor, lighting, toilet, sinks and faucets were all selected but it had not crossed my mind that I would have to share my private space with so many people!
Let me rewind a bit — the old master bath had double sinks so it has been a long time since I had to deal with anyone else's toothpaste smudges or eyelashes in my sink. It was MY sink. I did not have to share. I stored MY things under it and above it and in the drawers next to it. There was room to spare! Suddenly, three weeks ago I packed up all my items and moved them into what we call "the kids bath". I could call it a lot of other names like "the yuck zone", "land of sticky toothpaste smudge", or the "streaked mirror palace". I have yet to figure out why I am the only person who can change the roll of TP. I am trying to keep my things tidy and make sure I do not leave a trail of conditioner, moisturizer, or worse. However, the others sharing my space have not been as considerate. Here is the scorecard so far — and remember it is only week 3. Let's hope the sharing does not have to go into November!
- Mirror wiping – 3x/day
- Clorox wipe sink – 4x/day
- Move step stool – 6x/day
- Hang towels – I've lost track!!
- Fill soap dispenser – 2x/week
- Fill TP roller- ???
I am very lucky to be able to tackle this project and I am well aware that I am complaining about a frivolity but we all have our sticking points (hee hee, get it, STICKING…) I cannot wait to go back to the seclusion of my own space, sink and smudges. Fingers crossed it will be soon!!!
Ali Corton is Framingham Mom, Realtor, Blogger and Social Media addict. You can read her blog at www.liveinframinghamma.com


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Reading 2 Arsenal 5
Santi Cazorla helped himself to a hat-trick as Arsenal closed up on the top four of the Barclays Premier League with a 5-2 win at bottom club Reading.
Gunners boss Arsene Wenger had called for a response following last week's shock Capital One Cup penalty shoot-out defeat at Bradford – and got it tonight as the visitors surged into a 3-0 half-time lead following Lukas Podolski's well-taken goal and a brace from Cazorla.
The Spaniard completed his treble on the hour, and although the Royals rallied with goals from substitute Adam Le Fondre and Jimmy Kebe, Arsenal made sure there would be no late drama when contract rebel Theo Walcott slotted in a fifth with 10 minutes left to close within two points of Tottenham.
In a sign of what was to come, the visitors were quickly on the offensive as midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain tested Royals keeper Adam Federici with a rasping drive.
Walcott then tried his luck with a 25-yard free-kick which bent around the wall, but also wide of the far post.
Reading forced an opening on 12 minutes when Pavel Pogrebnyak broke down the right past Kieran Gibbs and pulled the ball back across the six-yard box, but Jobi McAnuff's shot was blocked.
Royals striker Noel Hunt then headed over from a corner as the hosts pressed again.
Arsenal were ahead on 14 minutes.
Gibbs pushed forwards down the left channel and clipped the ball through to Podolski, who expertly took the bounce in his stride to leave two defenders trailing in his wake before smashing a left-foot shot past the keeper.
The Gunners were now full of confidence, as midfielder Cazorla cracked a 20-yard effort just wide.
Walcott sprinted clear onto a pass from the Spaniard, but Federici was out quickly to close down the angle and make a smart save with his legs.
Jack Wilshere's shot into the ground was then pushed behind by the busy Reading keeper.
However, it needed a superb clearing tackle by Arsenal skipper Thomas Vermaelen to get the ball away from in front of his own goal after a break by Pogrebnyak down the left.
It was 2-0 on 32 minutes.
This time Podolski turned provider as the German charged down the left channel before chipping the ball back through the six-yard box where Cazorla arrived to head past Federici.
Before the Royals could mount any sort of fightback, Arsenal were 3-0 up on 35 minutes.
Walcott's cross from the right was nodded back by Gibbs and Cazorla, with his back to goal, turned to hook the ball into the bottom corner.
There was, though, some concern for Arsenal when Wilshere was left in a heap after being caught in the groin by McAnuff's boot, which saw the Reading captain cautioned by referee Anthony Taylor. The Gunners midfielder was able to continue, however.
Federici produced a brilliant save to palm away Walcott's flying header as Arsenal went close to further extending their lead before half-time.
Walcott split the Reading defence again with a burst of pace at the start of the second half, latching onto an angled ball into the right side of the penalty area from Wilshere, before cutting the ball back goalwards, which Adrian Mariappa hacked off the line.
The Royals defence was breached again on the hour as Cazorla grabbed his hat-trick, drilling the ball in at the far post after Wilshere had released Podolski down the left.
The home fans at least had something to cheer on 66 minutes when Le Fondre pulled a goal back when he was played in by Jay Tabb after the midfielder had latched onto a stray pass from Gibbs. Le Fondre sprinted clear following Wilshere's slip to round Wojciech Szczesny and net.
Reading closed further with 20 minutes left when Kebe slotted home after beating the offside trap from a pass by Hal Robson-Kanu.
Hopes of a remarkable comeback were, however, dashed with 10 minutes left when Walcott was released into the right side of the penalty area by Cazorla, and the England midfielder stepped back inside before slotting a curling effort into the far corner.
Substitute Olivier Giroud was denied a sixth in stoppage time when Federici made a smart block at the edge of his area.


text: What happens when the VW Vortex guys collide with the now defunct MPH A-squad? You get Motive, a new online magazine that can toss off pop-media references with the best ironic referrers, while getting elbow-deep into modern car stuff. In their premiere week, Motive takes a Ferrari 250 GTO replica to the high school from Ferris Bueller's Day Off to see if Principal Rooney truly is a man of warmth and compassion, and if having a roof (unlike the original Ferrari 250GT California fakie) makes playing hooky in downtown Chicago more or less of an event than it was in 1986. Then again, Mia Sara is married to a Connery now, so you really can't go back. [Motive]


text:
Rasheed Wallace never disappoints. At the end of the Knicks' emotional victory over the Heat last night, 'Sheed was roused from a fitful nap at the end of the bench by the crowd chanting his name, and coach Mike Woodson immediately subbing him in for his first minutes as a Knick. He looked out of shape, hit a three, and with zen detachment, offered "Brian Scalibrine role" as the new euphemism for a substitution during the loose giddiness of a blowout victory, replacing the shopworn "victory cigar" for at least a night. Let's hope it sticks-in the wake of his retirement, Scal's earned a little recognition.
UPDATE: Video of the magical moment when Mike Woodson gave into the crowd:


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Baltimore City high school students rewarded for attendance
W.E.B. Dubois High School presented with $1,000 check
Some Baltimore City high school students are learning a valuable lesson -- that it pays to show up for class.
But the rewards go far beyond money; good attendance also gives them a real chance at future success.
There were sounds of celebration Wednesday just outside W.E.B. Dubois High School in northeast Baltimore, because attendance numbers for the freshman class are up more than 10 percent.
"Guess what, W.E.B. Dubois High School? Our freshman are awesome because we won, out of all of the high schools in Baltimore City public schools," W.E.B. Dubois Principal Delores Berry-Binder told the students.
The Family League of Baltimore City wrote the school a $1,000 check as part of a citywide competition to keep more students in school. Students and staff at W.E.B. Dubois High School said it all comes down to accountability.
Student Kaiya Ghee said she has not missed a single day of school so far, and she's making sure her friends don't, either.
"I have to text my friend, like, 'Where are you? Where have you been?' She said she was coming late, but she came," Ghee said.
It's become a team effort in and out of the school building.
"As their math teacher, I check in with their coaches, their mentors, their parents. Every single one is in my cellphone. I text them regularly, but really (I'm) building a relationship with the student and their entire support system to keep them in school," teacher Hannah Barnet said.
Students said the numbers are up because they care about their education.
"If you miss a day at school, it's really important because this school keeps moving as far as academics go. So if you miss you one day, you can probably miss a whole lesson that might be important for a test coming up," student Antae McDowell said.
School officials said they hope what happened at W.E.B. will catch on all over the city.
"That shows that you're committed to learning, that you are taking responsibility for your future, and you need to be praised and celebrated for that," Baltimore City Schools CEO Dr. Andres Alonso said.


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Additionally, there is no way for the M3 or S8 owners to say they were not racing. The video footage (from the rear and front) is what it is.
Be smart out there people.
Sometimes assessing blame is more fun than finding solutions, so I am going to say that it was 51% Audi's fault, and 49% BMW's fault. The BMW was passing slower traffic on the left (as you are supposed to do), and the Audi was passing on the right (not supposed to do). The dumb $#@! in the Audi should have hit the brakes.


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text:
If we had any doubts, consider them quelled — Will Smith knows how to make an entrance.
The Oscar nominee made his return to "The Tonight Show" Thursday night to chat about his upcoming role in Suicide Squad, but before he could even sit down, the show had already begun.
Ever the comedian, the actor insisted that the standard arrival guests make onto the sound stage wasn't enough for Jimmy Fallon's audience, so he tried it again--only this time, while rolling in a human hamster ball. Despite the raucous applause, it didn't reach the star's entry bar.
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"I just think they deserve a little more than that," Smith told Fallon of the audience. "I was your first guest ever on this show, man. I gotta give it to 'em."
Will Smith Shares an Adorably Honest Message for Jaden Smith on His 18th Birthday
So, Smith gave everyone a little boogie. The lights dimmed, the music blasted and Smith's bevy of disco dancers got into formation for a 70s themed bonanza.
The pièce de résistance was Smith, of course, who performed a personal groove before taking a seat once again.
Though we were sure he had exhausted all efforts, the actor had one more entrance up his sleeve — and it was grand with a capital G. First, a choir arrived to make the official announcement that Smith had arrived. Next, he rode onto the stage atop a unicorn. After walking the freshly laid red carpet, confetti poured out from the ceiling.
It was the perfect reminder to book your unicorn for Saturday night.


text:
by Jeff Baker, The Oregonian • April 13, 2012
Amy Stewart is the first Tin House writer-in-residence at Portland State University.
Stewart is the author of several popular books on the natural world, including "Wicked Bugs," "Wicked Plants" and "Flower Confidential."
She's already on campus and, according to her blog, is auditing a drawing class and a class on the French Revolution and is eavesdropping on amusing conversations about kombucha in local coffee shops.
Stewart is teaching a nonfiction workshop at PSU and is living in an apartment provided by Tin House near its Northwest Portland offices. A public appearance is scheduled for May 11 at the First Unitarian Church.
The writer-in-residence program is one of several partnerships between Tin House and PSU. This term, Charles D'Ambrosio is teaching an intensive master class on Anthony Doerr that will culminate in a public reading and interview on May 18. Doerr lives in Boise and is a regular instructor at the Tin House Writers' Workshop, as is D'Ambrosio.
Tin House Books is about to publish "The Listeners," the first novel by Leni Zumas, who joined the PSU English department last fall.
More literary news from Portland State: Junot Diaz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," will speak at the 48th annual Nina Mae Kellogg Awards Ceremony at 5:30 p.m. April 30. The ceremony honors award winners in Portland State's English department. Diaz, a native of the Dominican Republic, teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His previous book is "Drown," a collection of short stories.
And more from Tin House: The literary magazine is celebrating the release of its science issue with a science fair. The evening will include readings by Zumas and others, music from Pure Bathing Culture and White Hinterland, experiments, vintage films and more.
8 p.m. Wednesday, Holocene, 1001 S.E. Morrison St.
World Book Night is one week away. On April 23, thousands of volunteers around the country will deliver hundreds of thousands of free books to those who don't normally have access to books. The event began in Britain last year and is expected to spread to more countries in the future.
Thirty books were chosen for delivery, among them "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian" by Seattle author Sherman Alexie, and "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot.
The Multnomah County Library and several local bookstores are participating in World Book Night.
--Jeff Baker, on Twitter


text:
Review: It's a Wonderful Life
It's necessary to rescue the Frank Capra film from its status as an untouchable American "classic."3.0
It's fitting that It's a Wonderful Life went from beloved Christmas staple to full-blown American institution during the Reagan years, when the cozily reactionary proclivities of Frank Capra's movie seemed most in synch with the ostentatious conservatism of the times. Yet it was also during the 1980s that the film received its most caustic analysis, in the form of a Saturday Night Live sketch which imagined the classic's "lost ending." When the people of Bedford Falls ditch singing "Auld Lang Syne" and become a torch-carrying lynch mob howling for Mr. Potter's blood ("You made two mistakes, you double-crossed and you left me alive," Dana Carvey's George Bailey snarls), it's not just great snark, but also a rich glimpse at the vicious darkness that has always dwelled under the film's benign textures.
Without overlooking its lapses into populist bathos, it's necessary to rescue It's a Wonderful Life from its spot at the centerpiece of untouchable American "classics." As with The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind (surely some kind of troika of sacred screen monsters), uncritical reverence both inflates the film's magnitude and robs it of its most interesting elements. Despite the fin de siècle gentility given its small-town setting, this is decisively a postwar work, never more visible than in the balance of hope and despair achieved by James Stewart as George Bailey. This was his first role in five years since enlisting in the Air Force, and Capra introduces his character with a freeze-frame that all but summarizes the actor's gawky persona, yet the rest of the picture gradually introduces the underlying anxiety—the subtle hysteria of a homespun performer who's seen horrors—that Anthony Mann would later bring to the fore in his great cycle of '50s westerns.
Indeed, Stewart's George is something of a cowboy, or at least a wanderer. He dreams of leaving home and traveling the world, and in the early scenes he's full of piss and vinegar. Inexorably, the picture proceeds to tame the roamer in him, draining out his youthful vigor through a series of domesticating events. When George's father dies, it falls to him to rescue the family's savings and loan association from being swallowed by desiccated plutocrat Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore), Bedford Falls's own Mr. Burns. The hero's settling down is a rigid standby of classical American cinema, but what's striking in It's a Wonderful Life is how ambiguously the movement toward the stability of family life is rendered. Few scenes have expressed the suppressions and compromises upon which domesticity is erected as beautifully as the close-up of George, anguished in a mix of regret and acceptance, admitting his place by the side of childhood sweetheart Mary (Donna Reed). George's subsequent achievements as a family man and community representative are scarcely negligible, yet his resentment never quite dissipates, it merely stays welled in him until something, like Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell) misplacing the company deposit, causes it to spill over.
How can a movie so full of pain and frustration be venerated as simply, glowingly jolly? Mainly adduced from Dickens, Capra's structure is also reminiscent of Bible stories, with George, like several of Capra's other protagonists, undergoing what Andrew Sarris described as a "melodramatic parable of near crucifixion." It's no coincidence that H.B. Warner, Cecil B. DeMille's original Jesus, has a prominent role in the large cast, but George's faith-testing pileup of misfortunes brings him closer to Job than to Christ: Distraught at a bar, his prayers are answered by a sock to the jaw. He has been heard, however, and divine help comes as "second class" angel Clarence (Henry Travers) literally drops from above to save him from the edge of the abyss. The appearance of a cloying angel in the midst of so much desolation is an element that, like Spielberg's final movement in A.I. Artificial Intelligence, can either make or break a film. Yet Clarence is essential here to usher in the film's great shadow sequence, a Dantean descent in which George is given a vision of how things would have been if he had never existed. Bedford Falls becomes Pottersville, crime and sleaze run bare-assed, the people he loved are either dead or wicked—a world fit for a Christmas postcard is suddenly full of tropes from horror and film noir.
It's typical of the film's populism that the loss of a single person is portrayed as a cosmic imbalance, enough to turn an idyll into an inferno. Although Bedford Falls and Pottersville are offered as the safely separated yin and yang of a community, both are equally believable as views of a society where order is suddenly revealed as precarious at best, just as George and Mr. Potter have more in common than it first appears. "You once called me a warped, frustrated old man…Now, you're a warped, frustrated young man," the ogre tells the hero, and the film can't refute him. After such troubling discoveries, the famous climactic affirmation comes off like an escape hatch: It's a wonderful life, the message goes, and be content with it because it can always get worse. Still, there's no denying the last passage's cathartic power, charged by Stewart's tremendous depth of feeling. It's Stewart's emotional force that dries up the material's potential schmaltz, modulating from the romantic who offers to lasso the moon for his beloved to the disgruntled wreck who later asks her, "Why did we have to have so many children?" Capra views the two facets with the same intensity, and films accordingly. Maybe it takes a filmmaker so fascinated with the American Dream to see how close it can be to a nightmare.
Cast: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, Henry Travers, Beulah Bondi, Frank Faylen, Ward Bond, Gloria Grahame, H.B. Warner, Frank Albertson, Todd Karns, Samuel S. Hinds, Mary Treen, Virginia Patton, Charles Williams, Sarah Edwards, William Edmunds, Argentina Brunetti, Lillian Randolph, Sheldon Leonard, Ray Walker, Charles Lane, Carol Coombs, Karolyn Grimes, Larry Simms, Jimmy Hawkins Director: Frank Capra Screenwriter: Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Frank Capra Distributor: RKO Running Time: 130 min Rating: NR Year: 1946 Buy: Video, Soundtrack
Review: Disappearance at Clifton Hill Is a Well-Sustained Trick of a Thriller
What distinguishes the film from much of its ilk is Albert Shin's ongoing taste for peculiar and unsettling details.2.5
Throughout Disappearance at Clifton Hill, director Albert Shin nurtures an atmosphere of lingering evil, of innocence defiled, that shames the ludicrous theatrics of Andy Muschietti's similarly themed It movies. Set in Niagara Falls, Ontario, the film opens with its finest sequence, in which a young girl, Abby (Mikayla Radan), runs into a frightened boy in the woods. One of the boy's eyes has been gauged out, and he wears a bloodied white bandage over it. (Perversely, the square shape of the bandage and the red of the coagulated blood make it seem as if he's wearing a broken pair of 3D glasses.) The boy gestures to Abby to keep quiet, and soon we see pursuers at the top of the hill above the children.
Much of this scene is staged without a score, and this silence—a refreshing reprieve from the tropes of more obviously hyperkinetic thrillers—informs Shin's lush compositions with dread and anguish. Just a moment prior, Abby was fishing with her parents (Tim Beresford and Janet Porter) and sister, Laure (Addison Tymec), so we feel the shattering of her sense of normalcy. The boy is soon scooped up, beaten, and thrown in the trunk of a car, never to be seen again.
Years later, the thirtyish Abby (now played by Tuppence Middleton) has yet to settle into herself, as she's a loner who haunts the nearly abandoned motel that her deceased mom used to run. By contrast, Laure (Hannah Gross) has married a sensible man (Noah Reid) and has a sensible job as a security manager at the local casino, which looms above the town surrounding Niagara Falls like an all-seeing tower. The casino, run by the all-controlling Lake family, is in the process of acquiring the sisters' motel. Looking through old pictures, Abby finds a shot that was taken the day she ran into the kidnapped boy, and she becomes obsessed with solving the case, descending into the underworld of her small, foreboding community.
Shin and co-screenwriter James Schultz's plot, and there's quite a bit of it, is the stuff of old-fashioned pulp. But what distinguishes the film from much of its ilk is Shin's ongoing taste for peculiar and unsettling details. A local conspiracy theorist, Walter (David Cronenberg), is introduced bobbing up and down in the water behind Abby as she investigates the site of the kidnapping, emerging in a wet suit from a dive to look for potential valuables. It's a hell of entrance to accord a legendary filmmaker moonlighting in your production, and it affirms the film's unease, the sense it imparts of everyone watching everyone else.
When Abby's sleuthing leads her to a pair of married magicians, the Moulins (Marie-Josée Croze and Paulino Nunes), they memorably turn the tables on her smugness, using sleights of hand to intimidate her and illustrate the elusiveness of certainty. And one of Shin's greatest flourishes is also his subtlest: As Abby surveys the hill where the boy was taken in the film's opening scene, a bike coasts across the road on top, echoing the movement of the kidnappers' car decades prior, suggesting the ongoing reverberations of atrocities.
Shin does under-serve one tradition of the mystery thriller: the unreliable protagonist. Abby is understood to be a habitual liar, a fabulist who's either a con woman or a person wrestling with issues of encroaching insanity. Given the luridness of the boy's disappearance, and the way it conveniently meshes with Abby's unresolved issues, the notion of the mystery as a terrible, self-entrapping fabrication is credible and potentially revealing and terrifying—suggesting the wrenching plight of the doomed investigator at the heart of Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island. But for Shin, Abby's fragile mental state is ultimately a red herring, relegating Abby to an audience-orienting compass rather than a true figure of tragedy. Which is to say that Disappearance at Clifton Hill isn't quite a major thriller, but rather a well-sustained trick.
Cast: Tuppence Middleton, Hannah Gross, Marie-Josée Croze, Paulino Nunes, Elizabeth Saunders, Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, Eric Johnson, David Cronenberg, Andy McQueen, Noah Reid, Dan Lett, Tim Beresford, Mikayla Radan Director: Albert Shin Screenwriter: James Schultz, Albert Shin Distributor: IFC Midnight Running Time: 100 min Rating: NR Year: 2019
Review: With Onward, Pixar Forsakes Imagination for Familiarity
While Onward begins as a story of bereavement, it soon turns to celebrating the payoffs of positive thinking.2
Pixar specializes in tales of people, animals, and artificial intelligence coping with loss: of a spouse (Up), of human contact (the Toy Story films), of love (WALL-E). But like a lot of Hollywood dream-workers, Pixar's storytellers also believe in believing. And faith in something, anything, is essential to the studio's latest feature, Onward, as the heroes of this comic fantasy are two teenage elves who go searching for the magical gem—and the self-assurance—needed to briefly resurrect their departed and sorely missed father.
Ian and Barley Lightfoot's (Tom Holland and Chris Pratt) 24-hour quest is lively and sometimes funny but seldom surprising. Writer-director Dan Scanlon and co-scripters Jason Headley and Keith Bunin have assembled a story from spare parts of various adventure and sword-and-sorcery flicks, and topped it with a sentimental coda about the value of a male role model. Mychael Danna and Jeff Danna's drippy score pleads for tears, but viewers who sniffle are more likely to have been moved by personal associations than the film's emotional heft.
Blue-haired, pointy-eared Ian and Barley live with their widowed mom, Laurel (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), in a neighborhood that's a cross between Tolkien's Shire and a near-contemporary California suburb. A prologue explains that "long ago the world was filled with magic," but enchantment succumbed to a diabolical adversary: science. The invention of the light bulb is presented as this toontown's fall from grace. What's left is a Zootopia-like cosmos where such mythic creatures as centaurs, mermaids, cyclopses, and, of course, elves live together in stultifying ordinariness. Most stultified of all is Ian, who meekly accepts the torments of high school. He's nearly the opposite of brash older brother Barley, a true believer in magic who crusades to preserve the old ways and is devoted to a mystical role-playing game he insists is based on the world as it used to be. (A few of the film's supporting characters appear by courtesy of Wizards of the Coast, the game company that owns Dungeons & Dragons.)
It's Ian's 16th birthday, so Laurel retrieves a gift left by the boys' father, who died before the younger one was born. The package contains a magical staff and instructions on how to revive a dead soul, if only for 24 hours. It turns out that Ian has an aptitude for incantations but lacks knowledge and, crucially, confidence. He casts a spell that succeeds but only halfway, as it summons just Dad's lower half. A mysterious crystal could finish the job, so the brothers hit the road in Barley's beat-up but vaguely magical van with a gear shift that reads "onward." Barley is certain that his role-playing game can direct them to their shadowy destination.
Like most quest sagas, Onward is an episodic one, but it doesn't make most of its pitstops especially memorable. The supporting characters are few and most are easily forgotten, save for a once-terrifying but now-domesticated manticore, Corey (Octavia Spencer), and Mom's cop boyfriend, Colt Bronco (Mel Rodriguez), who may be a centaur but strikes his potential stepsons as embarrassingly bourgeois. Both join a frantic Laurel on her sons' trail.
Onward doesn't have a distinctive visual style, but it does showcase Pixar's trademark mastery of depth, light, and shadow. As in Scanlon's Monsters University, the fanciful and the everyday are well harmonized. That's still a neat trick, but it's no more novel than Ian and Barley's experiences. Animated features often borrow from other films, in part to keep the grown-ups in the crowd interested, but the way Onward recalls at various points The Lord of the Rings, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Ghostbusters feels perfunctory and uninspired. And it all leads to a moral that's at least as hoary as that of The Wizard of Oz or Peter Pan. While Onward begins as a story of bereavement, it soon turns to celebrating the payoffs of positive thinking. That you can accomplish whatever you believe you can is a routine movie message, but it can feel magical when presented with more imagination than Onward ever musters.
Cast: Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Octavia Spencer, Ali Wong, Lena Waithe, Mel Rodriguez, Tracey Ullman, Wilmer Valderrama, Kyle Bornheimer, John Ratzenberger Director: Dan Scanlon, Jason Headley, Keith Bunin Screenwriter: Dan Scanlon Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Running Time: 103 min Rating: PG Year: 2020
Interview: Lesley Manville and Liam Neeson on Working Together on Ordinary Love
It's to the immense credit of these two great actors that Ordinary Love is so inspiring.
It's to the immense credit of Lesley Manville and Liam Neeson that Ordinary Love is so inspiring. As Joan and Tom, the couple at the center of Lisa Barros D'Sa and Glenn Leyburn's drama about a couple tested by the wife's breast cancer diagnosis, their naturalism and comfort never waver while the characters stare down the disease.
Despite having never collaborated prior to their brief rehearsals for the film, these two celebrated actors settle authentically into the quiet dignity of longstanding companionate affection. Both performances hum with grace notes as the actors imbue even the most quotidian moments with compassion and wisdom. Ordinary Love speaks to how Joan and Tom maintain the strength of their relationship in spite of cancer, not because of it.
The bond that appears effortless on screen, however, was quite effortful, as I learned when talking to the two actors following the film's limited release. The organic chemistry was evident between Manville and Neeson, who both spoke softly yet passionately about their approach to forging the connection at the heart of Ordinary Love. The two performers came to the film with storied careers and full lives, both of which contributed to how they approached bringing Tom and Joan's tender marriage to life.
Lesley, you've said that Liam was the big draw for you to board this project. I'm curious, to start, what's your favorite of his performances and why?
Lesley Manville: Oh my gosh! I've got to say the right thing here. I wish I'd have seen you [to Neeson] on stage. I never have. Schindler's List, I think, really is up there. Had the [Ordinary Love] script been awful, then I wouldn't have wanted to do it despite Liam. But the script was great, and they said Liam was going to do it, so I said it sounded like a good one, really.
Liam, do you have a favorite performance of hers?
Liam Neeson: I've seen Lesley in a couple of the Mike Leigh films. She struck me, and I mean this as a compliment, as like, "Oh, that's someone who just walked in off the street and is playing this." She was so natural and so great as an actress. And I did see her on stage, I thought she was wonderful.
Right away, we can sense such a shared history of the couple. Surely some of it came from the script itself, but how did you collaborate to ensure you were on the same page about where Tom and Joan have been?
Manville: Sometimes it's hard to manufacture that or try to cook it up. I guess the casting of the two of us was pretty good and a fluke to some degree. We could have not got on. The warmth we have for each other is a bonus. We couldn't predict that until we'd met. We're quite similar as actors, really, we see what's on the page and try to make it as truthful as possible. But day one, we were shooting scenes of them on the sofa, watching telly, not doing much, 30-plus-year relationship…you just have to plow in and do it. We've both lived a fair amount—
Neeson: We didn't really "plan" anything. There's a saying, "If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage." That foundation stone of the script was beautiful.
Was there a rehearsal period, or did you just jump right in?
Manville: We had a couple of afternoons in New York, didn't we?
Neeson: Yeah, we did.
Manville: Liam lives here, and I was doing a play. Lisa and Glenn, our directors, came over and we spent a few afternoons mostly eating quite nice lunches.
Neeson: Yeah, those were nice lunches. But we certainly didn't "rehearse" rehearse it, did we?
Were they more like chemistry sessions?
Neeson: Yeah, just smelling each other, really!
Liam, you've said that part of what drew you to the film was the ability to play someone like yourself, a nice Northern Irish man. Is it easier or harder to play something that's less like a character and more like yourself?
Neeson: I think if you're playing a character that's not you, i.e. thinking of doing accents, there's a process of work you have. Be it an American accent or a German accent, there's a process. Then I try to do that and ignore it. So, whatever comes out of my mouth comes out. If a few Irish words come out, if it's supposed to be German, I don't care. You can fix it a little bit in an ADR department, but I hate doing a scene with a dialect coach there.
I have to tell you a funny story. I did this film Widows with Viola Davis a couple years ago. And myself and Colin Farrell have to be from Chicago. I met with this lovely lady, the dialect coach. My first scene was in a shower, right, and into the bathroom comes Viola with a little drink [mimes a shot glass] for her and I, it's a whole process we do before I do a heist job. It's a little ritual we do, and she has a dog, a tiny wee thing. When we finish the scene, I'm supposed to go "rawr-rawr" to the dog. I did this a couple of times, and the dialect coach literally ran in and says, "Liam, you're doing the dog sound wrong, accent wise! It should be 'woof-woof,' use the back of your throat." I thought, "She's pulling my leg! The dog's that size [puts hand barely above the ground]." But she meant it.
Manville: Oh dear, she needs to take a check, doesn't she?
Neeson: But being the professional I was, I went "woof-woof."
When you're playing characters who are "ordinary" or "normal," as the final and working titles for the film have suggested, do you start with yourself and fit into the character? Or is the character the starting point and you invest little pieces of yourself into it?
Manville: Certainly, for me, there's a lot about Joan that's not a million miles away from me, although there are obvious differences. I just thought, there's this woman, they've had this tragedy in their lives, they've lost their daughter, getting on with things, their lives have reduced down to this co-dependent small existence—it's all about the ordinary stuff. And then you've just got to layer onto that the fact that this horrible diagnosis happens. But, in a way, I felt that took care of itself because I—touch of wood [knocks on the wood frame of her chair]—have not been through breast cancer. I've had a sister who did, but the women in the [hospital] scenes, the technicians and the surgeons were all real, and they were very helpful. They were wonderful women, and they helped me hugely just walking me through it. I just thought, "There's Joan, and you've just got to be Joan as these other things are happening to her." Of course, all bits of your own experiences and life stuff comes out. But it's almost not conscious. I've had a lot of life—a lot of ups, a lot of downs, as has everybody. That's nothing exceptional. Nothing more different than the average person. Our job is we lock those feelings away somewhere inside of us, and they're there to call upon if we need to.
Neeson: Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. James Cagney used to have an expression when an ingénue would ask him how to do a scene. He famously said, "You walk in the room, plant your feet and speak the truth." That was always his answer. It's true.
There's a moment during chemo where Joan makes a remark that she thought the experience would change her more but feels relatively the same. Lesley, I'm curious, do you believe her at that moment?
Manville: Yeah, because you're always you, no matter what's happening. I guess that kind of statement is probably quite particular to people who go through a big health thing like that. You expect it's going to really alter you, shift you, but actually it's still you underneath. Because it's just you with this epic thing happening to you. Nevertheless, it's you.
Is it tough as an actor to depict that kind of stasis while also bringing some variation?
Manville: I think there's enough in the scenes. A good point in the film is when they [Tom and Joan] are having a row about nothing—which color pill. But it's bound to happen. They're a great couple, yet something gives way because that's human. I felt that was quite well charted throughout the script.
We don't really get a similar moment of verbal reflection from Tom. Do you think the same sentiment of feeling unchanged might apply to him?
Neeson: There's one scene where he visits their daughter's grave and talks about how scared he is. And I think he is. But he's "man" enough to put up a kind of front that everything's going to be okay, and I think he really believes that too. But he's terrified that he might lose his life partner. It might happen. Without getting too heavy about it, I know Lesley has experienced loss in her family. I've had four members of my family die. It was wrenching for the family—very, very wrenching. It's a horrible disease. Lesley was saying to me last night, in America alone, one in eight women are going to suffer some form of breast cancer, which is an astronomical number. We are all one degree of separation from someone who has it.
Manville: But the survival rate is very impressive now.
It's nice that the film is about more than just the struggle of the disease but how life continues in spite of it. We even start the film more or less where we ended it in the calendar year.
Neeson: Just that minutiae of life. Going to a grocery store. You still have to eat! Save up your coupons, that minutiae, I love that it comes across the script.
You've both worked with some incredible directors in your time. Is there anything in particular that you took from them for Ordinary Love, or do you just clear out your memory in order to execute what Lisa and Glenn want?
Neeson: I think Lesley said in an earlier interview—forgive me for jumping in, darling—that you absorb it through osmosis if you work with really good people. And bad people too. You just allow it to come out. You're not, "What was it Martin Scorsese said? I must remember that. Or Steven Spielberg"—I don't do that.
Manville: Also, they get a lot from you too. A lot of people think directors are like dictators. If they employ two actors like us, they're expecting a collaboration of some sort. Hopefully they get something from us too.
In this more recent stage of your career, you've each had roles that have exploded and become beloved by the Internet—Liam with Taken, Lesley with Phantom Thread. How do you all react to something like that making such a big splash where people turn your work into a meme?
Manville: I didn't know what a meme was until quite recently. Somebody told me I was a meme.
Neeson: What is it? I honestly don't know. I've heard the word, but I don't know what it means.
Manville: They just take a bit of a performance…
Yes, snippets of a performance and use it as a response to something else. Recontextualized.
Neeson: Oh, I see. Like "release the kraken."
Or "I have a very particular set of skills" from Taken. I see that, and I see bits of Cyril a lot online.
Manville: Apparently, I'm a bit of a gay icon. So that's new. Never thought I'd reach my age and be that. But I'll take it!
Is that just a nice thing to keep in the back of your head? Does it enter into the process at all?
Manville: No! Listen, I think there's a myth that actors, however successful they are, wander around in some sort of successful bubble. You're just not! You're having your life like everyone else. I understand that our jobs are quite exceptional, and other people view our jobs with some kind of halo over them. But personally speaking, when I'm working, I'm working. The rest of my life is incredibly regular.
Review: The Call of the Wild Provides a Resonant Take on a Classic
The film's avoidance of cruel Gold Rush realities is more than made up for by its spirited kineticism.3
The latest cinematic adaptation of Jack London's The Call of the Wild is a surprisingly thrilling and emotionally moving adventure film. Its surprises come not only from director Chris Sanders and screenwriter Michael Green's dramatic overhaul of the classic 1903 novel for family audiences, but also from the way their revisions make London's story richer and more resonant, rather than diluted and saccharine.
It's worth recalling that London's vision of man and nature in The Call of the Wild is anything but romantic; indeed, at times it's literally dog eat dog. In his story, the imposing yet spoiled Buck, a St. Bernard and Scotch Collie mix, is kidnapped from his wealthy master's California manor and sold to dealers in Yukon Territory, where the Gold Rush has created high demand for sledding dogs. Buck's initiation into the culture of the Northlands involves severe beatings at the hands of his masters, brutal rivalries with fellow sledding dogs, harsh exposure to unforgiving elements, and an unrelenting work regimen that allows for little rest, renewal, or indolence. What London depicts is nothing less than a Darwinian world where survival forbids weakness of body and spirit, and where survivors can ill-afford pity or remorse.
Not much of that vision remains in Sanders and Green's adaptation. Buck is still kidnapped from his home and sold to dog traders, but his subjugation is reduced from repeated, will-breaking abuse to a single hit. In this Call of the Wild, dogs never maul one another to death, a regular occurrence in London's novel. And minus one or two exceptions, the human world of the story has now become uplifting and communal rather than bitter and cutthroat. In the first half of the film, Buck's sledding masters are an adorable husband-and-wife team (Omar Sy and Cara Gee) in place of a rough pair of mail deliverers, and in the second half, John Thornton (Harrison Ford), Buck's last and most beloved master, isn't revealed to be hardened treasure-seeker, but a grieving man who finds redemption in the great outdoors.
The film's avoidance of cruel Gold Rush realities is more than made up for by its spirited kineticism and by its deepening of the man-dog bond that forms the heart of London's story. This Call of the Wild relies heavily on a CGI Buck (and other virtual beasts) to create complex choreographed movement in labyrinthine tracking shots that would be impossible to execute with real animals. One might expect the artifice of even the most convincing CGI to undermine Buck's palpable presence, as well as the script's frequent praises to the glory of nature, yet the film's special-effects team has imbued the animal with a multi-layered personality, as displayed in joyously detailed, if more than slightly anthropomorphic, expressions and gestures. And the integration of Buck and other CGI creations into believable, immersive environments is buttressed by the cinematography of Janusz Kamiński, who lenses everything from a quiet meadow to an epic avalanche with lush vibrancy.
In the film's first half, human concerns take a backseat to Buck's education as he adapts to the dangerous world of the Northlands, but in the second half the emergence of Ford as Buck's best friend adds to the film a poignant human dimension. Thornton rescues Buck from a trio of inept, brutish, and greedy city slickers (Dan Stevens, Karen Gillan, and Colin Woodell), and Buck in turn saves Thornton from misery and drunkenness as he pines away for his late son and ruined marriage while living alone on the outskirts of civilization.
This is a welcome change from London's depiction of Thornton, who possesses on the page a kind heart but not much else in the way of compelling characteristics; the summit of his relationship with Buck occurs when he stakes and wins a fortune betting on Buck's ability to drag a half ton of cargo. In this film version, Thornton and Buck's relationship grows as they travel the remotest reaches of wilderness where Thornton regains his sense of wonder and Buck draws closer to the feral origins of his wolf-like brethren and ancestors. Ford lends gruff vulnerability and gravity to Thornton in scenes that might have tipped over into idyllic cheese given just a few false moves, and his narration throughout the film forms a sort of avuncular bass line to the proceedings lest they become too cloying or cute.
A paradox exists in The Call of the Wild, which is indebted to advanced technological fakery but touts the supremacy of nature and natural instincts. Yet there's a sincerity and lack of pretense to the film that transcends this paradox and evokes the sublime.
Cast: Harrison Ford, Dan Stevens, Omar Sy, Karen Gillan, Bradley Whitford, Colin Woodell, Cara Gee, Scott MacDonald, Terry Notary Director: Chris Sanders Screenwriter: Michael Green Distributor: 20th Century Studios Running Time: 100 min Rating: PG Year: 2020 Buy: Book
Review: Daniel Roher's Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band
Robertson's sadness was more fulsomely evoked by Martin Scorsese in The Last Waltz.2.5
Toward the end of the 1960s, with the Vietnam War raging and the civil rights movement and the counterculture in bloom, art was about taking political and aesthetic sides. As such, one can understand how Bob Dylan's electric guitar could be met with violent boos, as it signified a crossing of the bridge over into the complacent mainstream, to which folk music was supposed to represent a marked resistance. In this context, one can also appreciate the daring of the Band, whose music offered beautiful and melancholic examinations of heritage that refuted easy generational demonizing, while blending blues, rock, and folk together to create a slipstream of American memory—Americana in other words. Like Dylan, the Band, who backed him on his electric tour, believed that art shouldn't be reduced to editorial battle hymns. Complicating matters of identity even further, the prime architects of Americana are mostly Canadian. Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, and Garth Hudson were all from Ontario, while Levon Helm hailed from Arkansas.
Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band is concerned mostly with celebrating the Band's early rise and influence on American culture, as well as their sense of connecting the past and present together through empathetic lyrics. Holding court over the film is Robertson, the dapper and charismatic songwriter and guitarist who looks and sounds every inch like the classic-rock elder statesman. Airing sentiments from his memoir, Testimony, Robertson mentions his mixed heritage as a citizen of the Six Nations of Grand River reservation who also had Jewish gangster relatives, and who moved to Canada at a formative age. Richardson learned his first chords on the reservation, and began writing songs professionally at 15, after he met Ronnie Hawkins and Helm. Hawkins's group would over several permutations become the Band, whose musical identity crystallizes during their collaboration with Dylan.
Director Daniel Roher's glancing treatment of Hawkins, a vivid presence who also performed on Martin Scorsese's Band concert film The Last Waltz, signifies that Once Were Brothers is going to steer clear of controversy. Was Hawkins bitter to have his band usurped by the teenage prodigy Robertson? Even if he wasn't, such feelings merit exploration, though here they're left hanging. The documentary's title is all too apropos, as this is Robertson's experience of the Band, rather than a collective exploration of their rise and fall. To be fair, Danko, Manuel, and Helm are all deceased, the former two dying far too young, though Hudson perhaps pointedly refused to participate in this project—another event that Roher fails to examine. And the big conflict at the center of this story—Robertson's intense, eventually contentious relationship with Helm—is broached only in an obligatory fashion.
Although the fact that Robertson and Hudson are the only Band members left standing adds credence to the former's view of things, as he maintains that much of the group succumbed to drugs and booze, leaving him to write most of the music and to shepherd their joint career as long as he could. (Robertson's wife, Dominique, offers disturbing accounts of the car crashes that routinely occurred out of drunk and drugged driving.) Helm, however, insisted that the Band's collective influence on musical arrangements merited a bigger slice of royalties all around. Robertson and various other talking heads remind us of these grievances, though Roher quickly pushes on to the next plot point. Robertson is a magnificent musician and subject, but his devotion to his side of the story renders him suspicious—a cultivator of brand.
For these omissions and elisions, Once Were Brothers is a slim, if ultimately enjoyable, rock testimony. The highlight is the archival footage of the Band practicing and recording, including a privileged moment with Dylan after one of the controversial electric concerts, as well as interludes at the pink house in Woodstock where they recorded their defining Music from Big Pink, an album that included their classic "The Weight," which Dennis Hopper would turn into a master boomer anthem in Easy Rider. Moments of the Band at play affirm Robertson's idea of their early days as a kind of lost utopia, and his present-day nostalgia is cagey yet undeniably moving. Yet Robertson's sadness, his sense of having witnessed friends and collaborators get washed away by bitterness and addiction, was more fulsomely evoked by Scorsese in The Last Waltz, as he looked at the Band and saw an entire group, a dying unit, rather than Robbie Robertson and the other guys.
Director: Daniel Roher Distributor: Magnolia Pictures Running Time: 100 min Rating: R Year: 2019
Review: Come and See Is an Unforgettable Fever Dream of War's Surreality
It suggests that a war's horrors were the ultimate unassimilable experience of the shadowy depths of the human mind.4
War movies largely condition us to look at warfare from a top-down perspective. Rarely do they keep us totally locked out of the commander's map room, the bunker where the top brass exposit backstory, outline goals, or lay out geography for the viewer. Both characters and audience tend to know what's at stake at all times. Not so in Elem Klimov's 1985 film Come and See, in which relentless bombings and frenetic camerawork shatter the Belarusian countryside into an incoherent, fabulistic geography, and the invading Germans appear to coalesce out of the fog on the horizon like menacing apparitions.
We experience the German invasion of Belarus through Flyora (Aleksey Kravchenko), a teenager who joins the local partisan militia after discovering a rifle buried in the sand. The early scene in which he departs from his mother and sisters presents a disconcerting, even alienating complex of emotions: the histrionic panic of his mother (Tatyana Shestakova), who alternately embraces and rails against him; the hardened indifference of the soldiers who've come to retrieve him; and the jejune oblviousness of Floyria himself, who mugs at his younger siblings to mock his mother's concerns. Eager to participate alongside the unit of considerably more weathered men, Flyora feels emasculated when he's forced to remain behind in the partisans' forest encampment with Glasha (Olga Mironova), a local girl implicitly attached to the militia unit because she's sleeping with its commander, Kosach (Liubomiras Laucevicius).
Glasha first takes on nymph-like qualities in Flyora's adolescent imagination, appearing in hazy close-ups that emphasize her blue eyes and the verdant wooded backdrop. This deceptive idyllic disintegrates, however, when the Germans bomb and storm the empty camp, kicking up clouds of dirt and smoke that never seem to fully leave the screen for the rest of Come and See's duration. The two teenagers flee, pushing through the muck of the now-fatal landscape, only to discover more horrors waiting for them back in Flyora's village.
The horrors lurking in the mists of a muggy Eastern European spring may not be what Carl von Clausewitz had in mind when he coined the phrase "the fog of war," but Klimov's masterpiece suggests a redefinition of the term, the evocative phrase signifying the incomprehensible terror of war rather than its tactical incalculables. Come and See's frames are often choked with this fog—watching the film, one almost expects to see condensation on the screen's surface—and Klimov fills the soundtrack with a kind of audio fog: the droning of bombers and surveillance planes, the whine of prolonged eardrum-ringing, an ambient and sparse score by Oleg Yanchenko. It's a cinematic simulacrum of the overwhelming, discombobulating sensory experience of war that would have an influence on virtually every war movie made after it.
And yet, in a crucial sense, there's hardly a more clear-sighted or realistic fiction film about World War II. Klimov refuses to sanitize or sentimentalize the conflict that in his native language is known as the Great Patriotic War. While fleeing back into the woods with Flyora, Glasha momentarily glimpses a heap of bodies, Flyora's family and neighbors, piled on the edge of the village where tendrils of smoke still waft from their chimneys. Despite the fleeting nature of her glance, the image sticks with the viewer, its horror reverberating throughout the film because Klimov doesn't give it redemptive or revelatory power. There's no transcendent truth, no noble human dignity to be dug up from the mass graves of the Holocaust.
Florya and Glasha eventually separate, Flyora joining the surviving men to scour the countryside for food, only to find himself the survivor of a series of atrocities perpetrated by the Germans. A full third of the Nazis' innocent victims were killed in mass executions on the Eastern Front—both by specially assigned SS troops and the regular Wehrmacht (though the myth of a "clean Wehrmacht" lives on to this day). As the end titles of Come and See inform the audience, 628 Belarusian villages were extinguished in the Nazis' genocidal quest for Lebensraum, so-called "living space" for the German Volk. As wide-eyed witness to a portion of this monstrous deed, Flyora's face often fills the film's narrow 4:3 frame—scorched, bloodied, and sooty, trembling with horror at the inhumanity he's seen.
Like his forbears of Soviet montage, Klimov uses a cast stocked with nonprofessionals like Kravchenko, and he doesn't shirk from having them address the camera directly with their gaze. In Klimov's hands, as in Eisenstein's, such shots feel like a call to action, a demand to recognize the humanity at stake in the struggle against fascism. Klimov counterbalances his film's apocalyptic hopelessness with a righteous rage on behalf of the Holocaust's real victims. The film, whose original title was Kill Hitler, takes as its heart-shattering climax a hallucinatory montage of documentary footage that imagines a world without the Nazi leader.
Come and See bears comparison to Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood, which likewise narrates a young boy's conscription into the irregular Russian resistance to German invasion. But whereas Tarkovsky embellishes his vision of a war-torn fairy-tale forest in the direction of moody expressionism, Klimov goes surreal. Attempting to make off with a stolen cow across an open field—in order to feed starving survivors hidden in the woods—Flyoria is blindsided by a German machine-gun attack. Pink tracers dart across the fog-saturated frame, a dreamlike image at once unreal and deadly. Taking cover behind his felled cow, Flyoria awakes in the empty field, now absolutely still, with the mangled animal corpse as his pillow.
As an art form, surrealism was fascinated by the capacity for violence and disorder lurking in the psyche. Without betraying the real—by, in fact, remaining more faithful to it than most fictional remembrances of WWI have been—Come and See suggests that the war's horrors were the ultimate unassimilable experience of the shadowy depths of the human mind. For Klimov, the dreamscapes of war realized surrealism's oneiric brutality.
Cast: Aleksey Kravchenko, Olga Mironova, Liubomiras Laucevicius, Vladas Bagdonas, Jüri Lumiste, Viktors Lorencs, Evgeniy Tilicheev Director: Elem Klimov Screenwriter: Ales Adamovich, Elem Klimov Distributor: Janus Films Running Time: 142 min Rating: NR Year: 1985
Review: Corpus Christi Spins an Ambiguous Morality Tale About True Faith
It's within the murky realm of self-doubt and spiritual anxiety that it's at its most audacious and compelling.3
Using as its jumping-off point the surprisingly common phenomenon of Polish men impersonating priests, Jan Komasa's Corpus Christi weaves an elaborate, thoughtful, and occasionally meandering morality tale about the nature of faith, grief, and community in the 21st century. Daniel (Bartosz Bielenia), a 20-year-old juvenile delinquent, is a recently converted believer, but he's also an opportunist. After finding himself mistaken for a man of the cloth upon arriving in a small, remote town, Daniel decides to strap on the clergy collar from a costume and play the part for real. Better that than head to the sawmill for the backbreaking work his former priest, Father Tomasz (Lukasz Simlat), has lined up for him.
This setup has all the makings of a blackly comic farce, but Komasa and screenwriter Mateusz Pacewicz play the scenario straight, using Daniel's fish-out-of-water status as a catalyst for interrogating the shifting spiritual landscape of a Poland that's grown increasingly disillusioned of both its religious and political institutions. For one, a general wariness (and weariness) of the cold, impersonal ritualism of the Catholic Church helps to explain why many of the townspeople take so quickly to Daniel's irreverent approach to priesthood, particularly his emotional candidness and the genuine compassion he shows for his parish.
That is, of course, once the young man gets past his awkward stabs at learning how to offer confession—by Googling, no less—and reciting Father Tomasz's prayers, discovering that it's easier for him to preach when shooting from the hip. The convenient timing of the town's official priest (Zdzislaw Wardejn) falling ill, thus allowing Daniel to slide comfortably into the man's place, is a narrative gambit that certainly requires a small leap of faith. But it's one that engenders a fascinatingly thorny conflict between a damaged imposter walking the very thin line between the sacred and the profane, a town still reeling from the trauma of a recent car wreck that left seven people dead, and a shady mayor (Leszek Lichota) yearning for a return to normalcy so that his corrupt dealings can run more smoothly.
The grieving process of the family and friends of the six teenagers lost in this tragedy is further complicated by rumors that the other driver had been drinking, leading to his widow (Barbara Kurzaj) being harassed and completely ostracized by the community. The falsity of this widely accepted bit of hearsay shrewdly mirrors Daniel's own embracing of falsehood and inability to transcend the traumatic events and mistakes of his own recent past. Yet, interestingly enough, it's the vehement young man's dogged pursuit of the truth in this manner, all while play-acting the role of ordained leader, that causes a necessary disruption in the quietly tortured little town. His unwavering support of the widow, despite the blowback he gets from the mayor and several of the deceased teenagers' parents, however, appears to have less to do with a pure thirst for justice or truth than with how her mistreatment at the hands of those around her mirrors his own feelings of being rejected by society.
It's a topsy-turvy situation that brings into question the mindlessly placating role that the church and political figures play in returning to the status quo, even if that leaves peoples' sins and darkest secrets forever buried. And while Daniel's adversarial presence both shines a light on the town's hypocrisy and their leaders' corruption, his own duplicity isn't overlooked, preventing Corpus Christi from settling for any sweeping moral generalizations, and lending an ambiguity to the ethics of everyone's behavior in the film.
Whether or not the ends justify the means or fraudulence and faith can coexist in ways that are beneficial to all, possibly even on a spiritual level, are questions that Komasa leaves unanswered. Corpus Christi instead accepts the innate, inescapable ambiguities of faith and the troubling role deception can often play in both keeping the communal peace, and in achieving a true sense of closure and redemption in situations where perhaps neither are truly attainable. Although the film ends on a frightening note of retribution, it's within the murky realm of self-doubt and spiritual anxiety that it's at its most audacious and compelling.
Cast: Bartosz Bielenia, Aleksandra Konieczna, Eliza Rycembel, Tomasz Zietek, Barbara Karzaj, Leszek Lichota, Zdzislaw Wardejn, Lukasz Simlat Director: Jan Komasa Screenwriter: Mateusz Pacewicz Distributor: Film Movement Running Time: 115 min Rating: NR Year: 2019
Review: Stella Meghie's The Photograph Isn't Worth a Thousand Words
The film is at its best when it's focused on the euphoria and tribulations of its central couple's love affair.2.5
Near the middle of Stella Meghie's The Photograph, Michael (Lakeith Stanfield) seduces Mae (Issa Rae) after dropping the needle on a vinyl copy of Al Green's I'm Still In Love with You. The 1972 soul classic is a mainstay in many a foreplay-centric album rotations thanks to the smooth atmospherics set by the Reverend Al's dulcet tones, but it's not the aptness of the music choice that makes this encounter so strikingly sensual. Rather, it's the leisurely, deliberate pacing with which Meghie allows the scene to unfold. As the mellow "For the Good Times" smoothly transitions into the more chipper and frisky "I'm Glad You're Mine," Michael and Mae engage in playful banter and subtle physical flirtations. The sly move of having one song directly spill into the next offers a strong sense of this couple falling in love, and in real time. The subtle surging of their passion occurs along with the tonal change of the songs, lending Michael's seduction of Mae an authentic and deeply felt intimacy.
The strength of this scene, and several others involving the new couple, is in large part due to the effortless chemistry between Rae and Stanfield. When the duo share the screen, there's a palpable and alluring romantic charge to their interactions, and one that's judiciously tempered by their characters' Achilles heels, be it Mae's reluctance to allow herself to become vulnerable or Michael's commitment issues. As Mae and Michael struggle to balance their intensifying feelings toward one another with their professional ambitions and the lingering disappointments of former relationships, they each develop a rich, complex interiority that strengthens the film's portrait of them as individuals and as a couple.
The problems that arise from the clash between Mae and Michael's burgeoning love and their collective baggage are more than enough to carry this romantic drama. But Meghie encumbers the film with a lengthy, flashback-heavy subplot involving the brief but intense love affair that Mae's estranged, recently deceased mother, Christina (Chanté Adams), had in Louisiana before moving away to New York. These flashbacks aren't only intrusive, disrupting the forward momentum and emotional resonance of the film's depiction of Mae and Michael's relationship, but they provide only a thinly sketched-out, banal conflict between a woman who wants a career in the big city and a man content to stay put in the Deep South.
The overly deterministic manner with which Meghie weaves the two stories together adds an unnecessary gravity and turgidity to a film that's at its best when it's focused on Michael and Mae's love story. The intercutting between the two time periods is clunky, and while both narratives eventually dovetail in a manner that makes thematic sense, Meghie extends far too much effort laying out Christina's many mistakes and regrets for an end result that feels both overripe and overwritten. When The Photograph lingers on the euphoria and tribulations of Mae and Michael's love affair, it's rich in carefully observed details, but the gratuitous flourishes in its narrative structure gives it the unsavory pomposity of a Nicholas Sparks novel.
Cast: Lakeith Stanfield, Issa Rae, Chelsea Peretti, Teyonah Parris, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Chanté Adams, Rob Morgan, Courtney B. Vance, Lil Rel Howery, Y'lan Noel, Jasmine Cephas Jones Director: Stella Meghie Screenwriter: Stella Meghie Distributor: Universal Pictures Running Time: 106 min Rating: PG-13 Year: 2020
David Lowery's The Green Knight, Starring Dev Patel, Gets Teaser Trailer
Today, A24 dropped the trailer for haunting mustache enthusiast David Lowery's latest.
Jack of all trades and haunting mustache enthusiast David Lowery is currently in pre-production on the latest live-action adaptation of Peter Pan for Disney, which is bound to be full steam ahead now that The Green Knight is almost in the can. Today, A24 debuted the moody teaser trailer for the film, which stars Dev Patel as Sir Gawain on a quest to defeat the eponymous "tester of men." Scored by Lowery's longtime collaborator Daniel Hart, The Green Knight appears to have been shot and edited in the same minimalist mode of the filmmaker's prior features, which include Ain't Them Bodies Saints and A Ghost Story. Though it's not being billed as a horror film, it's very easy to see from the one-and-a-half-minute clip how Lowery's latest is of a piece with so many A24 horror films before it.
According to A24's official description of the film:
An epic fantasy adventure based on the timeless Arthurian legend, The Green Knight tells the story of Sir Gawain (Dev Patel), King Arthur's reckless and headstrong nephew, who embarks on a daring quest to confront the eponymous Green Knight, a gigantic emerald-skinned stranger and tester of men. Gawain contends with ghosts, giants, thieves, and schemers in what becomes a deeper journey to define his character and prove his worth in the eyes of his family and kingdom by facing the ultimate challenger. From visionary filmmaker David Lowery comes a fresh and bold spin on a classic tale from the knights of the round table.
The Green Knight is written, directed, and edited by Lowery and also stars Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Sarita Choudhury, Sean Harris, Kate Dickie, and Barry Keoghan.
See the trailer below:
A24 will release The Green Knight this summer.
Review: Onur Tukel's The Misogynists Stagily Addresses the State of a Nation
Tukel's film doesn't live up to the promise of its fleet-footed opening.2
Taking place on the night of the 2016 presidential election, Onur Tukel's The Misogynists begins, fittingly, with the sound of a woman crying. Alice (Christine Campbell) explains to her concerned daughter that she's sad because half of the country has made the wrong decision, prompting the child to respond that her mother has herself been wrong before: "You were wrong when you thought that black man stole your cellphone." Defensively writing off this past instance of casual racism as nothing more than an honest mistake, Alice sends the girl back to bed, after offering a weary "probably not" in response to her asking if she could be elected president someday.
In just a few lines of dialogue, Tukel exposes the moral blind spots and hypocrisy of otherwise well-meaning liberals, not to mention the irresponsible vanity of outrage and despair in the face of a stinging electoral defeat. This short scene highlights the emotional vulnerabilities that often underpin, and undermine, political convictions, and it serves as a perfect encapsulation of almost all of the film's thematic concerns.
Unfortunately, the rest of The Misogynists doesn't live up to the promise of this fleet-footed opening. Set mostly within the confines of one hotel room and featuring sex workers, a Mexican delivery boy, wealthy businessmen, and other roughly sketched characters from the contemporary political imagination, Tukel seems to be aiming for a broad comedy of manners in the key of Whit Stillman and early Richard Linklater, but there isn't enough attention to detail, sense of place, or joie de vivre to make his scenarios come to life.
The narrative revolves around Cameron (Dylan Baker), a friendly but obnoxious Trump supporter. Holed up in the hotel room where he's been living since breaking up with his wife, he invites various visitors to share tequila shots and lines of coke in celebration of Trump's victory, while he holds forth on such hot-button topics as racial hierarchies, gun control, and gender roles. Baker delivers a spirited performance as Cameron, but the character is little more than a one-dimensional stand-in for a particular reactionary attitude, especially compared to the more nuanced and conflicted figures he interacts with. As the script isn't bold enough to dig into the deeper emotional appeal of Trump's nationalistic fervor and old-school machismo, Cameron's smug, pseudo-intellectual cynicism is mostly unconvincing.
Tukel realizes one of his few visual flourishes through the TV in Cameron's hotel room, which switches itself on at random and plays footage in reverse, transfixing whoever happens to be watching. This works well as a metaphor for the re-emergence of political beliefs most people thought to be gone for good, as well as the regression that many of the characters are undergoing in the face of an uncertain future. It provides a hint of the more affecting film that The Misogynists could have been had it transcended the staginess of its setup.
Though the film's dialogue rarely offers enough intellectual insights to justify a general feeling of artificiality, it does effectively evoke the media-poisoned discourse-fatigue that's afflicted us all since before Trump even decided to run for public office. The film shows people across the political spectrum who appear to have argued themselves into a corner in an effort to make sense of their changing society, and their failure to live up to their own beliefs seems to be contributing further to their unhappiness.
Going even further than this, one of the escorts, Sasha (Ivana Miličević), hired by Cameron offers up what's perhaps the film's thesis statement during an argument with her Muslim cab driver, Cairo (Hemang Sharma). She insists on her right to criticize whoever she wants, claiming that "Americans wouldn't have anything to talk about" without this right. This idea of conflict being preferable to silence ties into the ambiguous denouement of The Misogynists. Tukel ultimately seems to suggest that the freedom so many Americans insist upon as the most important value is, in fact, so lonely and terrifying that even the spectacle of the world falling apart is a reassuring distraction.
Cast: Dylan Baker, Trieste Kelly Dunn, Ivana Milicevic, Lou Jay Taylor, Matt Walton, Christine Campbell, Nana Mensah, Rudy De La Cruz, Hemang Sharma, Cynthia Thomas, Darrill Rosen, Karl Jacob, Matt Hopkins Director: Onur Tukel Screenwriter: Onur Tukel Distributor: Factory 25, Oscilloscope Laboratories Running Time: 85 min Rating: NR Year: 2017
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Walk alongside the mighty Hadrian's Wall, visit majestic castles that preside over wild and windswept beaches, or head into the hills and see some of Europe's best night skies.
Northumberland, England
- Once the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire, Hadrian's Wall stretches 73 miles across the north of England, much of it across the top of Northumberland.
- The remote and unspoilt North Pennines is an 'Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty', this breathtaking wilderness is home to an array of wildlife, including 80% of the UK's black grouse population.
- The Farne Islands, in easy reach just off the coast, are declared by broadcaster David Attenborough as his favourite place in the UK to see nature at its best. Around 23 different varieties of birds can be spotted here, including colourful puffins.
- Did you know? Northumberland has more castles than any other county in England. Be sure to check out Bamburgh Castle in its magnificent surrounding settings and Alnwick Castle which stood in for Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films and where you can take broomstick flying lessons.
- Northumberland is around 3.5 hours away from London by train and 30 minutes from Newcastle International Airport by car.
Northumberland | It's in our naturePrepare to discover just how much Northumberland has to offer.
Farne Island Boat TripsSpot some of the amazing wildlife that call the Farne Island home.
5 Reasons to Visit NorthumberlandFind the best things to see and do in Northumberland


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The U.S. State Department denies accusations it misrepresented details surrounding the death of a diplomat in southern Afghanistan.
Anne Smedinghoff was killed by a suicide bomber on Saturday along with three U.S. soldiers, a U.S. civilian and three Afghans in Qalat, the capital of Zabul province,
Statements released at the time of the attack said Smedinghoff had been in an armored vehicle traveling with the provincial governor to a book donation at a local school when the suicide bomber rammed a vehicle filled with explosives into the armored vehicle.
However, it was later reported that Smedinghoff was walking to the school with a group of journalists when the attack occurred. The car bomb was detonated as the governor's convoy drove past Smedinghoff.
Patrick Ventrell, acting deputy press spokesman for the State Department, said initial reports by Afghan television and news websites about the attack may have misled diplomats in other Afghan cities, The Guardian reported Thursday.
"I think part of the initial confusion came about because there were reports in the media about the local governor and his convoy," Ventrell said. "Some of our initial reporting also indicated that, and that's why we weren't able to clarify right away. So our initial read on it was different, and we're now able to say that it was a convoy and they were walking."


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Bush Medicine Leaves, 2003
Acrylic on linen
60 x 90 cm
This work represents the leaves of the Kurrajong tree used in the Utopia region to treat a variety of ailments. The women collect the leaves, dry and mix them with Kangaroo fat, in order to extract the plant's medicinal qualities. The significance of the Kurrajong tree and the part it plays in healing is celebrated in the Women's Awelye ceremonies.
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Note: M.I.Y.O. Monday stands for Make It Your Own Monday, a question thrown out to DCF readers every Monday to jumpstart the week with lively interaction. I also welcome questions and suggestions for future MIYO Mondays. Email me.
I'm headed to Italy very soon but you wouldn't think it from the way I've been eating nothing but Italian cuisine the past few weeks. Ideally, I should be staying far away from pasta and pizza and baskets of grissini and focaccia as well as bistecca fiorentina but I just can't help it. Right now, Italian food has cast some sort of perpetual siren spell on me, something I can't break or shake off. It's mad. By the time I get to Italy, I might very well be sick of the stuff.
And by some weird succession of – dare I say it – poor choices, I've not been lucky with the restaurants I've chosen to dine in, places that are new and old, places that don't register on the buzz meter. If you follow me on Twitter, I've given some hint as to my frustration with the Italian restaurants I've dined at in the past three weeks. You may ask why didn't I just go to my tried and trues, places where the pasta prevails and the pizza presses itself into loving memory? Well, I get bored easily and I had a whole list of Italian places that I needed to scratch off my list.
Yesterday for Sunday lunch, I had my Bin drive me all the way to Cavite to an Italian place highly recommended by a chef-friend of mine. No cigar – or should that be no cannoli? Save for one or two dishes, the place was less than scintillating. Mamma mia!
In the early 2000s, my favorite Italian restaurant was Caffe Maestro along Reposo, a place that served a most unforgettable panna cotta. Though its sister restaurant, L'Opera, also serves it and is still around, the ambiance is different. Then there's Trattoria Uno which, though gone now, will always reign supreme in my pantheon of great restaurants because it was there where my king asked me to be his queen.
Driving home from that rather lackadaisical Sunday lunch, we passed by Mona Lisa, which I remembered that I like very much. And then of course there's my current Italian mainstay, La Dolce Vita which I discovered just recently also makes one of the better calzones in Manila. But more on that another time.
DCF readers, help me get out of my Italian food funk! Tell me: what is your favorite Italian restaurant and what do you eat there?