I watched the video. I’m sympathetic to the arguments for both watching and not-watching the video, but I am very glad it exists. Is it actually going to result in a murder conviction? I don’t know. But this is murder, and then evidence-planting, there is zero doubt about it.
Could not be more into the history of “no, totally!”:
At first blush, “no” does not appear to be the kind of word whose meaning you can monkey with. For one thing, there is its length. At just two letters and one syllable, it lacks the pliable properties of longer words. You can’t stuff stuff inside it. (You can say “unfreakingbelievable,” but you cannot say “nfreakingo.”) You can’t mangle it, à la “misunderestimate” or (the finest example I’ve heard lately) “haphazardous.” On the contrary, it is so simple and self-contained that it is a holophrasm, a word that can serve as a complete sentence. (Holophrasms aren’t common in English, but any verb in command form can be holophrastic—“Go,” “Help,” “Run”—and babies just learning to talk use single words to express complex ideas all the time, albeit without regard to grammar: “Ball,” “Up,” “Want.”) Moreover, the word has the apparent fixity and clarity of a logical operator: like “if,” “then,” “and,” “or,” and “not,” “no” seems designed to be unambiguous. When we ask, in the face of excessive pestering, “What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?,” what we mean is: “Unless you are a complete cretin, there is no part of ‘no’ that you could possibly misunderstand.”
What I loved about this takedown of the excerable Hobbit movies was how fully Amal owns being a dorkwad for the books, bc that’s important and also gives you credibility in my eyes. I also loved this:
When the Eagles appeared on screen, I smiled a little sadly. I leaned my head towards my fiancé and whispered, “I wish—I just wanted Bilbo to say ‘The Eagles are coming.’” I lay back to watch it again, and suddenly felt the film locking eyes with me as it stabbed me in the gut and twisted the knife.
In the book, Bilbo is invisible. The battle looks hopeless. Then, suddenly, he spots the Eagles! “The Eagles are coming!” he cries. He waves his arms, shouting, deliriously happy, “The Eagles are coming!” knowing that they’re saved, that the Eagles will turn the battle’s tide, that they’ll win the day. A rock hits him on the head, he falls unconscious, and wakes up just in time to be taken to Thorin’s deathbed in a tent in Dale, within sight of Gandalf and the others. He and Thorin reconcile and part as friends. A sadder and a wiser man, Bilbo returns to the Shire.
“The Eagles are coming!” is joy; it is relief. If that moment in Mirkwood is depression, the Eagles are epiphany. The Eagles are ex machina, the Eagles save us from Orcs not once but twice in the book, the Eagles are rescue, are hope, are a light flashing in the dark.
In the film, Thorin is dying alone on the rocks, seeing the battle lost, when Bilbo finds him. Thorin dies in his arms. Bilbo whispers to the now–dead Thorin, “But—the Eagles are coming.” He is bewildered, at a loss; repeats, “the Eagles are coming,” in a choked whisper, and cries, clutching his friend to his chest.
Thorin doesn’t see the Eagles. Bilbo doesn’t have his epiphany; for him in that moment the Eagles are salt in the wound of Thorin’s death. They can’t bring him joy or relief; they can only compound his misery at their having arrived too late. And it all goes a bit meta as the Eagles are salt in my wounds, too: Bilbo said the line, my dear line from the book, but in a mirror darkly. “We gave you what you wanted,” the film smirks, tossing the mutilated corpse of my favourite book into my lap.
EVIIIIITA, EVIIIIIITA (remember, you will soon receive my “Every Song On the Soundtrack of Madonna’s Evita” masterwork, so good to do your background reading.)
A new book review site stuffed with Toasties!
Music critic Jon Bream on selling his vinyl collection (for scholarship money!) and moving forward:
Bream’s been getting records sent to him at such high volume for so many years that most of the records have only been played once or twice, if at all. Everything is in mint or like-mint condition, with some albums still sealed in their original shrink wrap, and every single record has a story.
I pull out a New Kids on the Block record and Bream groans, griping about having to cover them several times in one year. A Captain Beefheart record reminds him of working at the old head shop; he can practically remember putting the price tag on it. And a stack of records by the Stooges and Big Star are handled so gingerly and bring such a tender smile to the typically stoic journalist’s face that it’s a wonder how he can bear to part with any of this at all.
“Sure, I’m going to miss a lot of it,” he says. “The weird thing is, a lot of it is visual memory, and not aural memory. Because that’s what vinyl is. And you know, everyone’s fandom or geekdom is over something different. Some people, it’s just like, ‘Oh I gotta have it! I just want to possess it!’ But it’s like, what good does it do you? Share it. If you can recirculate it, at least someone will get it, enjoy it, and like it.”
I love TV network fightssss:
Behind the scenes, things weren’t going as smoothly. Even NBC loyalists acknowledge that Turness’s introduction to the realities of U.S. broadcast news was rocky. “One thing she didn’t really know about was talent management,” admits an executive who admires Turness. “I remember early on I asked her how many journalists she had supervised [in London] who made a million dollars a year. She said one. And she didn’t understand that you communicate [with the talent] through their agents. Like if [WME co-C.E.O.] Ari Emanuel calls, you have to phone back the same day. So I remember we had to kind of calm Ari down. Once all that was worked out, she caught on fairly quickly.”
TWO NETWORK STORIES IN ONE DAY PRAISE THE LORD OF LIGHT:
The strain on HBO Go became clear at 9 p.m. on Sunday, April 6, 2014. Jake Caputo, the Take My Money, HBO! guy, was sitting in his basement entertainment center revved up for the season 4 premiere of Game of Thrones. He’d been waiting 42 weeks for this moment. He was now a cable customer with HBO, thanks to an Internet package his provider offered. Popcorn and pop were on hand.
But Caputo’s night didn’t go as planned, since HBO Go crashed. Like millions of others, Caputo was left staring at a spinning, buffering circle for an anguishing 45 minutes. “There was a lot of sitting and staring and checking Twitter to see if anybody was able to get in,” Caputo recalls. The outage was all the more embarrassing for HBO because the same thing had happened just a month earlier during the True Detective finale. HBO Go was still not a 7 Series BMW.
This was my workout yesterday. When I saw it, I figured the second half was an ALTERNATE set of exercises, but, no. We did them all. Why so many crunches?
if you don’t want to get shot by the police, don’t fight with them! or run away! or run towards them! or hold your ground!
— a time to shrill (@theshrillest) April 8, 2015
About 5 times per day my mind goes back to that cop shooting Walter Scott, and just how cold-blooded it was. No big deal. Business as usual. I am sick at heart.
It’s murder. Cold freaking bloody murder
I really hope they reopen any investigations into his prior shootings, because I feel like they must exist.
I’ll regret knowing, but what do glider wipers entail–are they the things where you put your feet on paper discs and slide them side to side while in plank? Because…that is horrible.
In less voluntarily horrible news, Ramsey Orta, who shot the Eric Garner video, is in Rikers, because the thin blue line won’t tolerate misbehavior by civilians, no indeed. There’s a GoFundMe for his legal fees.
Yes, those are glider wipes. Vile.
Yes! Please consider donating to Ramsey Orta’s legal fund.
While I won’t watch the Walter Scott video, it is important that it exists – and it is important that we defend and support the people who record these instances of police brutality. These instances are going to become more frequent, I’m afraid.
I feel like the ‘watching or not watching the video’ debate is going to be increasingly important as we see more of these cases. Personally, I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea of watching it, and I feel similarly about when people share graphic images of war on social media. While it’s important that the video EXISTS, I feel like it’s a terrible violation to share images of someone’s death without their prior consent. If I’m ever murdered, the thought that people might share and watch that moment on the internet is deeply horrifying to me.
It’s even worse when it’s still images, because those also mean you’re forcing graphic images onto people’s news feeds (unlike a video where they at least have to click through), and that really isn’t a fair way to toy with people’s mental health. It makes me furious when people make sanctimonious posts about war with graphic images (and let’s face it, the message of those is almost always “I’M A BETTER PERSON THAN YOU BECAUSE I CARE ABOUT THE WAR”), especially since sometimes the photos aren’t even from the actual conflict they’re talking about.
But it’s important that the word gets spread when these things happen, so I don’t know how to do that without sharing the video. If any of you have a smart solution I’m all ears.
I take a lot of care to avoid graphic images because they make me lightheaded and panicky, but the internet is always trying to subvert my avoidance tactics! At the height of the Iraq war I would read the paper every day by slooowly peeling each page from the corner and shutting it immediately if I saw anything that looked like blood. Now twitter automatically previews all photos and I don’t think there’s a way around it. WTF??
Yes, me too. I had to unfollow a lot of my activist friends on Facebook because they post graphic images too frequently. I told my therapist how much it upset me and that I felt like by avoiding them I was somehow too weak or didn’t care enough about the issues. It was her who pointed out to me that sharing those images may not be ethical in the first place, and she’s so right. It is not respectful of a person’s life to reduce them to an anonymous dead body in the name of making a political point.
I use Twitter’s mobile app and web Tweetdeck, both of which allow you to turn off image previews.
No solution, just chiming in mostly because this is the only part of this situation I can think of without feeling like my soul has been crushed.
I can’t watch it, but I’m sure I’ll force myself to. I hate the idea of making tragedy a spectacle, but at the same time I think that if it were me and I felt watching my murder would help turn the tide and push for social change, then maybe I’d be less squicked out by it? What frustrates me most, though, is that I feel so damn certain that – video or not – this cop won’t face serious consequences. And knowing that (as a white person living in NC) I probably interact with more people in a day who would defend the cop than would stand up for Walter Scott, who would argue that the cop saw something we didn’t, is just…that’s part of what makes this video important to me as a social good while still being a horribly personal thing to have go viral.
I hear you. I guess for me it’s like. . .part of the tragedy of a murder is that person is robbed of the opportunity to choose how they’ll be mourned and honored. Most young-ish people don’t have a will or plans for their funeral in place. So we don’t know if Walter Scott would have wanted the video shared, and he’s already been robbed of the chance to tell people how he’d like them to honor his life, so it seems doubly disrespectful to me to assume that he would want this video shared.
I of course share your frustration that this cop will likely get off and that this will keep happening. And it’s not our fault we’re in this bind– but the fact that we seemingly have no choice but to dishonor this man’s body if we want to fight for justice is really quite terrible.
Tried responding to this but it got put down below. 🙁
It makes me very much appreciate that I have social media/news sources I can trust, so that I can take someone’s word for what happened and not have to watch any such videos myself. I don’t need to subject myself to watching because, well, I’m not on a jury or any other situation where my opinion of exactly what happened there matters. And unless I somehow knew my whole social media audience was made up of people who did need to be convinced that police violence exists, I wouldn’t share such graphic & personal images for the same reason.
I’ve seen a few posts sharing a text version of the story and a non-mugshot photo of him, to counteract the awful news stories we know are being written right now. Seems like the kindest way to spread the word.
I am on the same page.
I am glad the video exists, because it means the killer is being charged when he probably otherwise wouldn’t be.
I understand the importance of video and photographic evidence both in terms of legal proceedings and in terms of history/memory.
But I don’t need to see it.
I think people who want/need to see the video know how to google. You don’t have to share the link, you can share a description of what the video shows and let them decide for themselves if they want to seek it out.
On a lighter note! The “no, totally” thing is fascinating. I kind of think I use it when what I mean is “No, I don’t disagree with you, yes you are correct”.
YES! I definitely say, “Yeah, no, I know exactly what you mean” and other variations on an affirmative/negative structure on a regular basis. So interesting to read about it.
And in saying that I realised that I use, “Yeah, no” to mean “no” and “Yeah, no, *continuation of thought*” as an agreement and now I have completely confused myself with my own syntax.
I use “yeah, no” to mean no and “no, yeah” to mean yes. Language is weird!
Yes!!! I once was doing research for my boss, and whatever she had wanted me to find didn’t actually exist, and when she asked something like, “There’s no way this other option would work?” I replied, “yeah, no.” Not only did she totally not understand what I was saying, she actually got kind of frustrated as though I was being intentionally unclear! But it was such a natural turn of phrase for me that I didn’t think anything of it—I’m confirming (yeah) that this negative (no) statement is correct. (This was over chat, also, which made it worse—but it made such a big impression on me that I remember it years later!)
Ditto. Drives MrChouffe up the wall, so I have been consciously trying to change it but it is HARD.
My boyfriend goes nuts when I end a sentence with “you know?” He’s like “No, I don’t know.” What are you, my high school English teacher? It’s a figure of speech! I can’t just stop doing it!
Yeah, no, yeah!
I think of it as “No, you don’t need to keep belaboring the point, because I agree.”
Yes, exactly!
I mean, no, totally 🙂
Agreed! I read the article waiting for the author to put forth that theory, but she never did, I don’t think. I see the “no” in “no, totally” as negating an implied “you probably don’t agree or haven’t thought of this before, but” that comes before the sentence you’re responding to.
I got obscurely annoyed that she never suggested this, and doubly so when she mentioned her “I know, totally” theory as her favorite–because people definitely say “No, I know.” WHAT NOW, EH.
In Australia it’s ‘yeah, nah’ and ‘nah, yeah’.
‘Nah, yeah’ is pretty much the same as ‘no, totally’
‘Yeah nah’ drives a lot of people batty but it’s everywhere and almost impossible to stop saying. It generally means ‘yes, I hear what you’re saying and it’s reasonable, but no, I disagree for reasons I will go on to elaborate.’
You Australians can always make everything a bit more casual!
Okay, I’m a full day late to this one, but it’s fascinating. I think it’s a mistake for the author of the article to dismiss “yeah, no” as different, because I think they’re related. Think about ‘Yes, but…” in which the “yes” doesn’t actually mean agreement, but rather acknowledgement of the other side’s argument. “Yeah, no” simplifies that and makes it more abrupt – yeah, you said that, but no, I’m dismissing it. So what happens, in the end, is that a transition between two thoughts – positive to negative – gets replaced, very simply, by a word indicating the positive and a word indicating the negative.
My guess is that “No, totally” started out as “No, really,” which shows the opposite kind of transition, denial/skepticism to affirmation. The “no” of “no, really,” is you anticipating and dismissing your listener’s doubt or surprise. So you get more emphasis on what you’re saying, and more attention from your listener, because you’re not just making a statement, you’re making an unexpected statement, a reversal of the norm. “Yeah, no, totally,” uses the “no” to create that same sense of unexpected reversal, and thus the same emphasis, in a sentence that actually contains no surprise or contrast at all.
There is no horror more inexcusable than what movie studios do to children’s fantasy books. I was a fan of Peeves and SPEW to the point where I could write a paper on the importance of Hermione’s shifting approaches to activism as an analogue for the white savior complex; I could not be consoled when the movies cut both of them, and then BUTCHERED GINNY WEASLEY ENTIRELY AND SACRIFICED RON’S BEST MOMENTS ON THE ALTAR OF ACTION-GIRL HERMIONE. (I was also into The Golden Compass, but I’ve decided for my own sanity that the movie never happened.)
A. Please write that paper.
B. Remember how when the books first got famous, JK said she would never allow any merchandising or movies to be made? I can’t say I totally blame her for cashing in, but sigh.
C. Ugh the Golden Compass. Such a promising cast! Such a disappointment.
RON AND GINNY ARE MY FAVORITE CHARACTERS, LET ME JOIN YOU IN THIS FIGHT.
What they did to Ron and Ginny is unforgivable
I will forever use my fanfic writing powers to MAKE PEOPLE LOVE RON AND GINNY. Nothing makes me angrier than someone putting Ron down as a bad friend/boring character. YOU SHUT YOUR LYING MOUTH, YOU GARBAGE PERSON.
AGREED. I was mad about it years ago, and I’m mad about it today.
Can I… humbly ask what you mean, if you don’t mind explaining? I don’t remember books very well, and it’s been so long since I read HP that I really can’t recall book Ron/Ginny versus what happened with movie Ron/Ginny.
Oh, like, it’s not like they completely destroyed the characters — they just never gave them their fair share of screen time, story, or respect. Ron especially was treated as a buffoon and a joke, and Ginny’s outspoken, witty and active character was just lost.
Part of it was casting issues (the actors were just not as good as Radcliffe and Watson), but the other part was a seeming struggle with an ensemble cast
Fair enough. Thanks!
I blame Kloves. He admitted in an interview that he assumed Harry/Hermione was the eventual pairing and so everything he did to Ron, like stealing all of his good lines and giving them to someone else, I chalk up to his COMPLETE INABILITY TO READ WHAT JO WAS PUTTING DOWN.
*gives all the middle fingers to Kloves*
I just read the books recently and I do like Ron’s character, but I totally don’t believe in Ginny. She just seems to spring from nearly nothing to Hot Funny Girlfriend Material. Even Cho seems more realistic!
YES
Things that would have immeasurably improved the movies:
A) animate them. Still use all the talented adult actors for voices, but be less freaking dependent on child actors aging through a decade. Also, better magic.
B) a full and in depth appreciation of the awesomeness of the Weasley family, most importantly, Ron and Ginny
C) a realization that Hermione is beloved and awesome because she isn’t a “picture perfect” stereotypical heroine
D) wait for the books to be finished so you’re not scrambling to introduce characters in he later movies
I’ve wanted an animated Harry Potter for a long time. It could be soooo good.
d) ii) most of all, don’t change the race of a character when you find out she’s got a speaking role.
E) maybe consider rethinking the depiction of magic? a little less kitchy, a little more subtle? less of the knitting doing itself in the Weasley house, more of the cars jumping to the head of the queue at the station?
less large brightly coloured chunky things that make cute noises and move like they’re on a stick behind a bench, is what i’m really saying.
Lena Dunham bought the rights to make Catherine Called Birdy into a moviee, and, no offense to Lena, I’m just going to pretend that will never exist.
whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat
right?
Why is she ruining all of the things? Leave my childhood alone, please.
That’s…no, I’m not ok with that.
I’m very excited about the Evita masterwork. In my second year of university, Wednesday night was essay writing night and my roommate and I would put my Evita video (this was before DVDs) on and do all our work for the week while watching it however many times it took before we had finished.
One of the most stressful dreams I’ve ever had involved my desperate quest to enter a new friend group. Their initiation ceremony required me to sing the entirety of “Waltz for Eva and Che” (both parts).
Reader, I nailed it.
As a young teen, I used to fantasize about dumping future boyfriends with “Waltz for Eva and Che”
This dream has never materialized
I’m here all day every day for musical discussions, so I can’t waaaaait for the Evita post. I will 1000% admit that I saw the movie first and so I still pretty much love it despite its failings (and they are many).
WALTZ FOR EVA AND CHE IS THE BEST SONG IN THE SHOW, PERIOD.
Madonna is the worst Eva Peron, sorry not sorry
She is, and I admit that, and I still enjoy the movie. I have no excuse other than childhood nostalgia.
My above-mentioned college roommate and I went to see the stage show years later, both sang along merrily and gave each other outraged stares when the songs werent’ the same.
These are the only feelings I have about that HBO article: “HBO finally has a stand-alone streaming service.” “YAY!” “It’s Apple-exclusive.” “Sonofa-!” I already ditched cable for a Roku box. I don’t want to have to go buy another whole stupid box, damnit.
I heart my Roku so much. And I’m not particularly bummed about HBO’s inaccessibility, I’m just hoping it will pave the way for stand-alone services for the channels I really want (y’hear me, TMC/BBC America/Nat Geo??).
BBC should make iPlayer available as a subscription service for those not in the UK
YES. I would absolutely pay for iPlayer. I also wish Channel 4 would do their 4oD for non-UK viewers. They’ve licensed a lot of their stuff to Hulu, but never the trashy stuff I want to watch and giggle at.
The content producers and distributors of the world are SO FAR BEHIND what the content consumers want and would willingly pay for.
It is infuriating but then, so is streaming. For Australians, anyway.
They may have gone with Apple TV only because fucking Comcast still doesn’t “support” HBO Go for the Roku. I have a Roku. I have access to an HBO Go account. HBO Go has a Roku channel. But Comcast (the internet division, not the cable tv division) doesn’t “support” the channel so you can’t use it if Comcast is your internet provider. Though you can still access HBO Go from a regular computer. Because that totally makes sense. *rage*
Comcast=rage
I don’t have Comcast, so I was unaware of this…this RAMPANT FUCKERY. This is as frustrating as when Hulu Plus has something that I can watch on a computer, but am not allowed to watch on my Roku. I’m already paying money dollars AND watching commercials. Why the HELL are there still Hulu things that aren’t available on Roku? (Also: why is everything Hulu chooses to be awful and the worst?)
ACTUALLY…. hold the phone, I just did my periodic half-hearted google search to confirm whether Comcast was still being dickbags about this and they -may- have finally added support. But I won’t dare believe it until I can go home and get it to work.
I have not seen Hobbit 2 or 3 AND I DO NOT PLAN TO. Hobbit 1 was enough bastardization of that book for me. I much prefer the Mallory version where everyone just sits around and has breakfast all day. The Hobbit book was very comforting to me in that same way – it was safe, like breakfast food. It reads like a children’s story – with grown up themes, to be sure, but something about reading it is like coming back to childhood. I rediscovered the book after college graduation, in a strange town trying to get into music grad school and being blue about being away from home and scared of auditioning, and my dad and I went to dinner at a place that also sold books, and I bought a paperback version of The Hobbit that is now extremely worn and is still re-read often. Yeah, I really just wanted to share this story and the sadness of having someone try to bastardize that very happy and comforting place. I read a review of the movies that was like “they are ok movies if you can distance them from the books” and that seems about right…
I feel the same way about the Hobbit! My parents actually read it to me as a bedtime story when I was growing up.
Although, I did have a weird fear as a little child that there were wolves in the trees that would leap down and kill you– like, we’d be driving on the highway and I’d tell my parents not to get too close to the side of the road because of the wolves. And I just recently put it together that that was because of a weird mushed-up version in my head of the scene in the Hobbit where they hide in the trees FROM wolves. So maybe it wasn’t the best story to read a little kid? But it makes me nostalgic either way.
I saw the first one in the cinema and was soooo boooooored by halfway through. I saw the second on DVD and fell asleep about four times, and it ws STILL GOING every time I woke up. It would have been a great single two-hour movie, it’s such a disservice to the book to stretch it out that way and milk it.
And the parts that get stretched out are the action-y parts, which are the least The Hobbit-y parts in my mind.
I did the exact thing but with the FIRST movie. I gave up at the stone giants (which, it’s been a long time since I read the hobbit but I don’t remember at all) and have not regretted it once.
Best thing about the Hobbit movies: the Hobbit movie tie-in breakfasts at Denny’s.
WHAT those existed?????????????????
http://www.restaurantnews.com/middle-earth-comes-…
The Hobbit-Hole Breakfast involved an egg baked inside a cheddar biscuit. Good times.
I hadn’t planned to see Hobbit 3, because I just couldn’t deal with all the bloat and wrongness in 2 and 1, but I watched it on the plane home from Europe last week. It was as hard to watch as Amal says in the article. The only upside was that I was prepared, since my husband and daughter had seen it in the theater in January and complained to me of all the worst parts. Still, it was tough to watch them totally waste the eagles, and Beorn, who gets all of 15 freaking seconds of screen time. Arggggghhhh.
I just want the Thranduil supercut. Just that. Which I am going to pretend has nothing to do with Tolkien.
I likewise saw the first one and didn’t bother with the others. It was too confusing trying to balance Kid Self (battle cry: “That wasn’t in the book!” and Adult Self (battle cry: “TEAM KILI!”) Because yeah, hot dwarves definitely are relevant to my interests.
Kid Self: Ew, really?
Adult Self: Oh, honey, when you grow up and learn about Richard Armitage, there’s going to be an awakening.
Kid Self: But he’s, like, old.
Adult Self: And so shall you be one day, kiddo.
Kid Self: Well, maybe. But it still wasn’t in the book.
Adult Self: …I’m going to rewatch North and South again. Less emotionally complex.
You just know that cop has done the same to others and without the benefit of video evidence to disprove his lies. I wouldn’t be surprised if this were a common practice in that department given how casual he was about it.
I love how “the Eagles” is always capitalized because it means that I can read that passage and imagine he’s talking about the band
Now imagining Glen Frey and Don Henley winging into the Battle of the Five Armies and defeating Bolg and the goblins through the power of soft rock.
On a scale of 1 to 10, Patti Lupone and Mandy Patinkin’s Evita is an 11, amazing and gives me the chills with its sheer power and biting cynicism and of course, the motherfucking singing, while the movie is like a -5. It’s weak and lame and embarrassing and Jonathan Pryce as a populist Argentinian dictator? Who thought that was a good idea??
Yas queen
I’ll also stump for Elena Roger though, who gives a very different performance to Patti Lupone, but is equally great imo
Yes, but her singing voice was just not up to the task. Too bad, because otherwise her performance was great.
MANDYYYYYYYY
Patti Lupone and Mandy Patinkin are unforgettable
All my love is reserved for Elaine Paige and Julie Covington. No one even remembers Julie Covington! But that was the version I got, as an LP at age like 9.
Is there a way to view this version? The movie came out just in time to start introducing me to (non-Disney) musicals, so I’m looking forward to revisiting it all with adult eyes.
I would like to share with you the following headline, which I believe is the best thing I will read all month:
President Obama unleashes the bees as children scream in terror
It’s not the Onion! It’s the Washington Post!
A friend of mine linked that story (or rather, a similar one) on Twitter yesterday, and I made the mistake of opening it while a very important meeting was going on right next door.
Trying to contain gales of horrible, shrieking laughter hurts, everybody.
I just tried to read a paragraph without laughing (I sit next to my grandboss) and I can’t and all I want to do is finish that story but I just lost my shit at “clear and present bees” and I can’t even think about that line without laughing and I think I need to take a walk and calm down.
This is great! I’m also a fan of the Politico headline:
‘Bees are good,’ Obama says as children scream
Life choices I’m happy about: I have never seen a Peter Jackson film. The wretched heartbreak described above isn’t worth it.
I loved Heavenly Creatures when I saw it at a more impressionable age. I am not sure I would want to risk watching it again
The first three LOTR movies are actually incredible. Which is why the Hobbit was unbelievably disappointing.
Exactly! Maybe it’s because I don’t have the same emotional connection to the LOTR books (I actually didn’t like them very much, mostly because I found all the female characters annoying, and Hobbit didn’t HAVE female characters to annoy me) and I loved, loved, loved the LOTR movies.
I think we should all talk about our emotional Hobbit stories all day, OK?
Happy to talk emotionally about the Hobbit all day. My first exposure to Tolkien and Middle-earth was as an 8-year-old, watching the Rankin-Bass animated Hobbit in an after-school program. As deficient as that version is, it captured the wonder and adventure of the book. I was hooked on Tolkien after that. The recent movies bypass adventure for Drama and Tragedy, and completely miss the point. As Elaine Boosler used say, “A fortune…pissed away!”
Agreed! The Lord of the Rings movies are still my favorite movies, 12-15 years later, and they are so poignant and exciting and visually stunning and a testament to the triumph of simple goodness over evil.
yes! the LOTR movies are my absolute favorite movies ever, hands down. like if they’re showing a marathon on TV, I’ll leave it on in the other room and watch my favorite parts and cry, every time. The Hobbit (trilogy!! TRILOGY?!?!) was such a colossal disappointment.
Noooo there is a lot of wonderfulness but also a whole lot of letdown. Wizard kung fu! Twee Celtic soundtrack! Growling Galadriel! 10000000000 shots of Frodo looking soulful and Sam looking worried!
I could go on but honestly, it seems obvious to me that the Peter Jackson problems are evident in embryonic form in LOTR and only reached full fruition in The Hobbit.
I’m sorry I’m sure you’re a good person in some way but everything you just said is monstrous and wrong and offends me to the core of my soul.
I could have been willing to compromise, but then I got to “Twee Celtic soundtrack,” and I’m sorry, that’s just unforgivable.
(Yeah, you can definitely see the seeds of some of The Hobbit’s problems–like that random scene with the skulls in the extended Return of the King??–but the Lord of the Rings movies bring me joy beyond measure)
AHHH but the whole paths of the dead sequence is brilliant and spooky what even.
I think, knowing a fetishistically large amount about Peter Jackson’s career as I do (no, YOU read every unbelievably banal and generally unpublishable book they ever released during and after the trilogy that cashed in on the desperate foolishness of misguided fandom [EVEN SEAN ASTIN’S STELLAR BIOGRAPHY “THERE AND BACK AGAIN, FFS]) that the real problem seems to lie with his genuine love of the books and the stories constantly pulling and pushing against his background in cheap shitty splatter gore films and really ostentatious, obvious cinematic trickery.
I can’t speak to the Hobbit, having fallen asleep in the first one and never seeing reason to rectify it, but several (SEVERAL) rewatchings of the entire extended LOTR trilogy definitely highlights this. Eg, anytime orcs and swords are involved with one another.
Also, the entire behind-the-scenes crew was AMAZING. Like, everybody involved in making LotR cared way too much, which kept the whole thing from turning into the rest of Peter Jackson’s filmography. The Hobbit doesn’t seem to have had that, and so all of his cheap gore films and cinematic trickery went largely unchecked.
And then Ian McKellen wept.
God that is so true. The amount of love in those documentaries, its basically half the reason I was so engaged with them at 15. That sense of banding together to do this great thing.
“Oh, we knew that people would only see the inside of this character’s cloak for 1/2 a frame, if that, but we hand-embroidered runes on it anyway, because that just seemed like the right thing to do.”
I am here with you for everything but “twee Celtic soundtrack”. That is blasphemy.
Aragorn falling off the cliff and kissing his horse. Elijah Wood’s ‘DRAMATIC’ face. Sam being a shouty dick. FRODO SENDING SAM AWAY. Dwarf tossing jokes. “Legolas! What do your elf eyes see!” Gandalf smacking Denethor with his staff. Denethor on fire running off a cliff. Faramir takes the ring. Shieldboarding. Oliphauntboarding.
Oh Eru, I can’t stop.
The Evita stuff is so timely! I was just arguing with my boss last week about it. He kept saying that the whole musical is just “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina” repeated over and over again and I was like, a) that’s a motif, b) you’re wrong, c) shut up. I think I was slightly more diplomatic than that, but only slightly.
That said, I do like Evita, but really only for Patti Lupone and Mandy Patinkin, and also because it’s one of the few decent musicals Andrew Lloyd Webber has written. Like, if all the Webber musicals were in a burning building, I would save Jesus Christ Superstar unquestionably; I would try to go back for Evita and Joseph, but like one under each arm; and everything else can burn, motherfucker, BURN.
I once had a friend try to unironically argue that Love Never Dies was a good show.
I straight up laughed in his face.
The Evita movie is terrible, and the Broadway Original Cast is my very favorite, but I did see it on Broadway…2 years ago? and Ricky Martin was a DELIGHT as Che and REALLY FUCKING HOT.
Also, the only movie version of a musical worth anything is Jesus Christ Superstar, which I actually like better than the original cast. (SORRY NOT SORRY)
NEE-LEY
Thou shalt have no other Christ before you.
(I’m really not a musicals person but….”The Temple”…..that’s all I need to say)
Jesus Christ Superstar is legitimately my favorite movie and I’m not even religious. I think it’s the source of most of my knowledge about Christianity.
And ENDLESS gif opportunities.
God, that scene is the best.
OMFG CARL ANDERSON CARL ANDERSON CARL ANDERSON.
I’m still reading the fanfic from yesterday, because Nicole is a monstrous puppetmaster.
Me too. And I was even going to bring it up today. Nicole, come ON. NO FAIR.
DANCE, MY PRETTY
I stayed up way too late to finish it!
I think I missed something, please help with link to monstrous fanfic?
It’s from yesterday’s (well, now two days ago’s) link roundup. Here you go! http://archiveofourown.org/works/330685/chapters/…
Glorious, thankyou!
I read all of it yesterday in a large gulp. It was amazing. I want more fanfic like that.
I totally agree. The more I think about it, the angrier I get. You’re right – it’s a continuation of stripping him of his humanity and I hate that. And the more I think about it, the more I am changing my mind. Maybe it’s more that I find the concept of HAVING the video imporant – something that can be shown in court – but I don’t feel like it should be spread via news agencies and blogs.
I like the Hobbit movies though the first two do kinda drag, even though I can see the logic of why everything’s there (I’m forgiving of a lot of things and just don’t get bothered–there have been two big exceptions lately–Iris West and Grant Ward of “The Flash” and “Agents of SHIELD” respectively. For the first time in a long time I am angered by my entertainment).
The oddest thing was I was cackling with glee and clapping and having so much FUN during “Five Armies” and I talked to a friend at a Christmas party that night and….he was mad.
(fuckin’ BEARATROOPER! COME ON!)
I read “The Hobbit” when I was 12 and loved it, but when I heard there was more, mostly by way of hearing friends sing “Frodooo of the nine fingers….” I was intrigued but….who’s Frodo? (I got a kick out of hearing that Billy Boyd had the same reaction as a kid). Bilbo was My Doctor. I didn’t want another.
I love the LOTRs movies and have bought them all twice (though only the extended versions) but I’ve only been actually going through the book in recent times, with Rob Inglis’ audiobooks (I’ve had false starts over time. That whole hobbit genealogy thing that kicks it all off is daunting) (See also: Dune…which I DID finally complete. All of it.) (except those two spinoff books about Paul and Alia) It’s fun to see exactly how much literal text they managed to get in the movies. I’m disappointed, however, that it’s only teased that there’s a Nazgul coming to Orthanc since Sauron’s looked at his palantir and thought “oh, good, he got one of those kids, he probably knows where the ring is…hey, Tony, go pick him up!” and Saruman ends up like Frank Whaley telling The Witch King that “I’m sorry things got so fucked up!” and being asked if the Great Eye looks like a bitch. Gandalf’s lolling on Shadowfax “someone’s gonna have some SPLAAAAININ’ to do!”
You’re a tease, John Ronald!
Wait, what’s wrong with Iris?
As they’ve written she’s just in the way of the story.
And she steals french fries. “Oh no, I hope that’s not Iris…..OH NO, IT IS!”
CAITLIN!!!
For me, it’s not so much Iris’ character as the way they write her story. The way she could be interesting, but they keep framing her as nothing more than an object of Barry’s affection and not really having purpose or a story outside of that (even her career is all about Barry/Flash). Or the way Barry has occasionally had Nice Guy moments towards her all petulant that he deserves to be rewarded by her love, and upset over being Friendzoned (never mind that they’ve been raised as siblings since they were 11 so of course she doesn’t think of Barry in that way). Or the way Barry is constantly interrupting some major potentially catastrophic event to run off and see Iris or moping over her instead of focusing on catching the criminal. It’s especially gross now that the three main men in her life have banded together in secret to keep The Flash’s identity from her, or how they often conspire to keep her away from the danger or keeping her unaware of the villain, always for “her own protection” (never mind that her not knowing some major bad guy is out there and possibly coming after her/her family is actually likely to put her further into danger), treating her like some fucking child. I appreciate that Eddie at least seems to realize how messed up and infantilzing it is that they’re keeping The Flash’s identity from her….although that didn’t keep him from going along with it.
She only seems to be there because you have to have Iris West in a Barry Allen story. She’s fait accompli. So she’s awkwardly inserted in there while being a character I just haven’t enjoyed (though I like her more than Felicity) (and I REALLY liked Linda Park–again knowing it couldn’t happen).
Grant Ward’s just an asshole with an actor who only possesses one facial expression (see: James Marshall/Hurley)
I just opened The Mary Sue to find this http://www.themarysue.com/iris-west-cws-the-flash…
Good stuff there. Also “I missed that episode” happened with Clara on Doctor Who. I really like the team relationship she had with the Doctor starting in “Hide”, but we hadn’t seen it happen. It happened at least, Iris is still drifting at the moment.
I’m with you on Ward. The way he was missing (and not missed at all) from a big stretch of episodes that were all fantastic, only to reappear in an episode that was far weaker than the ones around it, just reinforced to me how much he needs to be written out of the show entirely. He’s an energy-suck on a show that does REALLY well without him.
The trouble with Iris is the same trouble the Arrow team had with Laurel early on. Her story doesn’t stand alone, she’s there because she revolves around someone else’s story. And because she’s required due to comic book canon to eventually be the leading man’s love interest the writers felt the need to include her but don’t know what to DO with her because they don’t want to hit the ground running with the pairing that’s canon in the comic books.
In the case of Arrow, Katie Cassidy’s bad chemistry with Stephen Amell derailed her being the LO entirely (from the looks of it to this point, at least), but with Iris I think they’re still holding out for eventual Barry/Iris, and the trouble is that right now anything that hints toward Barry/Iris is REALLY TEDIOUS. Especially since everyone seems to love Eddie, and as soon as Barry/Iris starts in earnest Eddie becomes the superfluous character, because right now he’s revolving around Iris’s storyline like she’s revolving around Barry’s.
I haven’t seen Arrow but boy….people hate that Laurel person. Vicarious viewing on Facebook was like watching “How I Met Your Mother” posts–everybody angry every week.
This is actually the first time I’ve been regularly watching American TV in years, though I still prefer to get a 1080 torrent the next day, I watched SHIELD last Tuesday night as it aired and, man, primetime ABC ads are really cheesy and annoying, until you get to the last 20 minutes and the 11:00 news starts chattering– *sharp metallic sound and bright flash* “AT ELEVEN, A GEORGIA MAN SHOT” I try to limit my live broadcast viewing to awards shows and sometimes the Super Bowl, and usually nowhere near sober. That helps.
Laurel’s issues are 80% bad writing, 20% the actress, I think. I’ve been told I’m being generous to the actress, but the writing’s at the crux of the issue regardless. They spent seasons 1-2 not knowing what to do with her, so the viewing audience got fed up with her shoehorned-in scenes and barely-there plots. She spent a lot of time being self-righteous and condescending to the other characters ’cause they couldn’t figure her out. Then they finally started giving her a lot of stuff to do, but by season 3 a lot of the viewership’s goodwill toward the character was already shot.
I live in the states and the only show I watch as it airs is Game of Thrones, mostly for spoiler-avoidance reasons. Everything else I watch on Hulu, so the only ads I get are the ones Hulu aims at me. Local news here is so screechingly awful anyway, it’s probably best.
Now HBO GO just needs to add Mr. Show and Tales from the Crypt.
If I don’t click through to that Hobbit article, I can choose to believe it was written by Amal Alamuddin.
That was my first thought, too. Sometimes reality is disappointing.
Also mine.
TWO NETWORK STORIES IN ONE DAY PRAISE THE LORD OF LIGHT
I initially read this to mean “Two network stories in one day praise The Lord of Light, Roger Zelanzy’s 1967 Hugo-award-winning novel!” Then I had a disappointed moment from which my day may not recover.
Every once in a while I think to myself “Maybe I should start exercising. Go to the gym, lift some weights, maybe even hire a trainer.”
Then I see or read about one of Nicole’s workouts and decide I’m okay with dying young.
Naw, weights are pretty cheap. go ahead, do it at home.
I’ve got a recumbent-style stationary bike that I have a very conflicted relationship with. It’s monotonous to just pump your legs in your living room…but it’s so hot to be taking a walk!
At which point I usually lift the weights for a little while. “Well, I did *something*! Besides, diet’s more important!” (walking with music really is more fun, it’s just that initial inertia…)
Nothing to do with HBO GO, but why doesn’t Amazon Prime Video have any seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm? They have almost everything else.
They also don’t have any Seinfeld. Maybe it’s a Larry David thing?
I am always here to talk about The Hobbit and the LOTR books or movies, though really the only thing I have to say about The Hobbit movies is that they are total garbage with the sole exception of Lee Pace’s Epic Bitch Face as Thranduil.
Seconded. Thranduil is worth the ticket price of seeing each movie the requisite one time.
No love for Smaug?
I don’t know what it says about me, or those movies, that I had somehow COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN ABOUT SMAUG. Jeez.
I love LPEBF. It is my most favorite. Luckily, Tumblr lately has been awash with gifs of LPEBF and it makes me a very happy girl (once I scroll through all the heartfelt, histrionic feelingsposts about Zayn, anyway).
HBO GO should have all it’s amazing kids programming available from the past. How can there be no Storyteller or Fraggle Rock? In fact their entire back catalog of original shows from between 1980 and 2000 should be available. There was some great programming on HBO back then.
It's from yesterday's (well, now two days ago's) link roundup. Here you go! http://archiveofourown.org/works/330685/chapters/…
Neville Longbottom and the Herbology Final Worth 1/2 His Final Grade.