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They come from a blog (http://slaughterhouse90210.tumblr.com/) that pairs screenshots from modern TV shows with thematically related quotes from literature.
It got tumblr famous, and it looks like Videogum has Maris doing one just for them at least once a week. I always find them impressive; she makes some really unexpected but dead-on connections between wildly different characters and mediums.
Hmmm, I have no book knowledge on this, and I see what you mean on the racial optics…but I would be surprised if the Daenerys as pure-intentioned liberator trend holds up much longer. We’ve been trained to cheer for her as she kicks one chauvinist ass at a time for three seasons, seemingly while maintaining some moral bearings re: slavery.
But she’s also hellbent on conquering Westeroes and being the queen of everything? It feels inevitable she’ll be in a position of having to decide to kill a lot of (innocent) people. Doesn’t seem in this show’s nature to have her follow a purely heroic arc.
Not really. Someone in a non-reader recap had figured it out (the big “X” being the giveaway) a few weeks ago, but Bolton just wasn’t a major character in my mind pre-Red Wedding so it didn’t matter that much. Everyone seems to be related to someone else in this show. Now that we know the designs they have for Bolton ruling the North and the benefit of having Theon captive, the connection is interesting.
There were episodes this season where I worried that keeping in every plotline from a 1000+ pg book was starting to work against the show. Aside from the main stories, it felt like a lot of treading water when we ventured away from King’s Landing for a couple minutes at a time to remind us that so-and-so was still hiking through the woods / having body parts severed in a dungeon somewhere.
But then I watch this season finale and realize just how many great characters there are and how strangely invested I am in so many of them. Samwise! After dropping in on about 20 campfire conversations between him and Gilly this year, so heartwarming when he finally got to Castle Black. Ser Davos! A whole season of him basically just sitting in prison learning to read pays off with him using the Magic of Literacy to save his own skin. The Hound! Proving himself a better protector to the Stark girls than their parents ever were.
Primer felt like it was intentionally created to be nearly impossible to untangle. That was the central concept, almost.
Upstream Color doesn’t put the pieces together for you either, but I think it was constructed as a puzzle with a correct answer that can be figured out with a small amount of connecting the dots afterward.
It also has three very different acts, and I’m still not sure how I feel about the final one. Lots of pigs. Lots of hazy montages of people running their fingers along the sides of walls (it’s like Terrence Malick in an office). Even if it doesn’t all work, the movie did have a way of staying in my head.
Oh yeah, that was the other thing. When they first arrived at the party Don specifically looked at a brunette woman getting out of the pool that looked a lot like Megan, but was also clearly not really her. They made a big point of showing that for a couple seconds. My interpretation was that during the hallucination it very well may have been that same woman, now seen by him as Megan in his drugged state.
Right, it seemed a leap to say the soldier was really dead. Given all the Vietnam protests on TV in this episode, the soldier’s appearance was likely just Don processing that angst via a memory of someone he associates with the war.
Plus, the Uproxx theory treats that whole sequence as if it happened while Don was ‘dead’ in the pool, when we actually here him falling in and Sterling yelling about it only at the very end of the hallucination. The whole hazy sequence was him making his way toward the pool before he fell in for a few moments.
The idea from the Uproxx article I actually like better was that they might kill off the ‘Don Draper’ identity, (with him going back to being Dick Whitman I guess?) at season’s end.
Not that I’ve seen a ton of evidence for it, but in that hash fueled hallucination, there was a moment where the blond woman called him Don and he said “That isn’t my name.” Followed a couple minutes later with him looking at himself dead in a pool.
Another subtle nod could be the agency name change, that includes the Draper dropping out of SCDP to become SC&P. Maybe?
Don/Dick attempting to reclaim his self-identity after another season feeling adrift vis that kind of symbolic move would be an interesting place to take things. Shed the suit of Don Draper on the beach and walk right into the ocean.
Never would have guessed Froggy was such a facilitator on the court, but damn, Lob City out there. And get out the way when the Moneymaker goes to the rim. Lethal.
Hey man, I think she’s checking you out!
Right. When all the book readers just couldn’t help but drop hints again and again that something big happened in book 3 / end of season 3, you knew it meant someone big died. And Robb made himself the clearest target one reneged wedding and decapitated ally at a time.
To be honest, if someone major had to get offed at the point in the series, I was hoping it would be the generally dull Robb—Daenerys is venturing into iffy territory, Tyrion keeps pissing of Tywin and Joeffry; I want them around as long as possible, and hopefully this buys them time.
All that said, Catelyn has had to watch awful thing after awful thing happen to her kids and husband for three seasons, so it was pretty stomach churning to watch it go down like it did. On the plus, I’ve got a new go-to song request for wedding DJs!
On the topic of trailers showing the entire plot, I vaguely remember a director saying he only let the trailer editors use footage from the first 1/3 of his films. At least for dramas and thrillers, that should be a standard rule; that opening 30-45 minutes was already designed to draw people in, introduce the conflict, etc. Just recreate an abridged version of how the film introduces itself and call it day without taking us through all three act changes in three minutes.
Unless you spent $100 million on a big finale of robots destroying Chicago; then maybe feel free to hint at that in your trailer.
Mild spoilers ahead:
It DID feel like it was building to more of a climax at Cinco de Cuatro. Once a character’s major episodes were done, they kind of fell away, which makes sense, but still. Plus with the circumstances of this season being kind of a one off, I probably expected more closure. But seasons 1-3 all ended similarly. And they’re obviously intending to lead into a movie; the whole Michael / Ron Howard plot was a meta setup for that.
2 & 3 were the low points of the season.
Honestly, I’ve gotten almost as much enjoyment since finishing all 15 from reading threads online of people pointing out subtle running jokes, possible clues regarding certain unresolved plots, etc. The 30+ min runtimes do feel bloated in a lot of the episodes, and the editing (timeline gymnastics aside) is much slower than previous seasons—but in review, this was an incredibly dense season in terms of gags, visuals, references in dialogue, etc. You could tell they had 7 years worth of jotted down ideas they wanted to drop in there.
I also thought they balanced referring to season 1-3 without overdoing it. There may be a couple passing “I’ve made a huge mistake” allusions, but on the whole they moved to a new (and funnier) gag when GOB has an epiphany.
There is a Buster episode toward the end and it’s one of my favorites. It looks like Tony Hale may have had some of the biggest scheduling issues, as he doesn’t factor into other episodes nearly enough, and his individual episode is a little more divorced from the rest. But it’s worth it, with several of the best moments of the season.
Nice, I’ll be at Dark Lord Day too. Not sure what group I’ll be in, but flag me down if you see me.
In retrospect, I think an opportunity was missed to make The Gwyneth an absurdly expensive drink that nobody could afford.
Teresa!!!!! (but you can also call her “T”)
I would never say this to his face, but Chris Trash did an amazing job organizing everything. The bar worked out great and was very accommodating, with staff occasionally peeking in to watch the compilation of classic YouTubes Chris put together.
And also: KCC posters, custom drink specials (The Gwyneth and The Topher Grace), CVS Bangers, people flying from both ends of the country to attend. Good job, all.
“I was trying to pronounce the london marathon winners name Tsegaye Kebede.”
https://twitter.com/ClementeAJ/status/326227136061009920
And, to be fair, watching him it does look like he’s trying to figure out a pronunciation on the page he’s reading.
But, seriously, remember when The Rock broke the bin Laden story?
I am definitely a member of the Getting Carded Until I’m 40 Club.
To all you skeptical cashiers: what kind of sad soul would risk a fake ID to buy a Trader Joe’s mix-and-match 6 pack?
Between this and the Samsung Galaxy ad of Mrs. Claus straight up sexting Santa, maybe we just skip Easter this year?
I enjoyed this movie, it was fun. But I’m also no Bond aficionado, so can anyone tell me if there is a history to the thing where Bond waits until AFTER the bad guys have killed someone before jumping into action? In Shanghai in the tower he waits until the assassin shoots, then starts a fight? On the island waits until Silva shoots the woman to start taking down the henchmen?
And then M basically staying in court to protect her pride when they knew a crazy guy was coming to kill her, leading to a bunch of other people dying as well? I guess over-thinking the morality of civilian casualties in Bond movies is why the Bourne movies exist, but still.
There has been a growing backlash to the Redskins name lately (about a century late, but still). Unfortunately, their POS owner Dan Snyder* and the POS commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell, insist on writing letters to Congress defending the “proud heritage” of the name.
*for you non-sportsball people, all you really need to know about Snyder is that he’s besties with Tom Cruise and you can fill in the rest of his charming personality from there.