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Someone really ticked off that one Cynthia doll from Rugrats and she turned into a freakshow clown with murderous tendencies?
It's a weird plotline, but halloween is weird anyway.
Featuring some cool things this go around like Flaws' Heath applier, which works on girls, confirmed! It's at the Oracle event; PFCs smithy apron (re-purposed to be a butcher :>) from WLRP; and Little Bones ' freak-feature hair for the Halloween themed Arcade event, too.
This picture was taken at Elysion's Upside Down themed sim.
Visit here!
Once upon a time you were charming
Thought that you would be my prince
Sparkling your eyes, so disarming
Didn't know that it would end like this
You ain't giving up that easy
And I've never been one to quit
But you took me by surprise, let me down
Until I realize that I'm that bitch
Plotline by Emlyn
youtu.be/KRC4SHOsbbc?si=bJwjazbwcWW-wmoV
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Name: Pyronia Enda
Species: Fire Demon
Related to:
Cousin of Lilura and Seraphina
Sister of: Eilidh
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Worships: Lilith, Nyx, The Morgan, Ares, Persephone, Lucifer, Hecate, Sekhmet. Meat Cat. Cthulhu
Hobbies: Magic, baking, summoning beings of eldritch levels. (might be the cause of the cursed creature appearing April 1st soon)
Likes: Fire, chaos, magic, alchemy, runes
Dislikes: Spiders, Fae, Dogs, pink
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sponsored stores:
Store 1:
Seydr
Primfeed: www.primfeed.com/seydr
Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/yukio_ida/
Child of Tiamat
Official post: www.primfeed.com/seydr/posts/23f6f56e-2431-44fc-b45a-5ddc...
&
DragonBorn
Official post: www.primfeed.com/seydr/posts/6a0c3eac-0c62-4ec3-bf3d-eb4b...
Store 2:
Vae Victis
Primfeed: www.primfeed.com/vae-victis
/Vae Victis\ - "Ahriman" - Draped Horns
Official post: www.flickr.com/photos/vaevictissl/52715874401/in/dateposted/
/Vae Victis\ - "Baphomet" Signet Ring
Official post: www.flickr.com/photos/vaevictissl/52387753648/in/dateposted/
/Vae Victis\ - "Deus Somniorum" - Hymnbook
Official post: www.flickr.com/photos/vaevictissl/53599655548/in/dateposted/
Store 3:
SodaCat
Primfeed: www.primfeed.com/lotuslex.resident
sodacat - Tiny Hearts Bodyshine Materials Applier
Official post: www.flickr.com/photos/200657923@N03/54315043543/in/datepo...
Store 4:
AERTH
Primfeed: www.primfeed.com/aerth
(my first blog post for them :D I know its an older tattoo, but this was my first Aerth tattoo and I love it dearly and have over used it lmfao)
Primfeed: www.primfeed.com/aerth
[AERTH] Of the ocean full body tattoo
Official post: www.flickr.com/photos/144691864@N03/51236318902/in/datepo...
Other credits and taxis can be found here:
Primfeed: www.primfeed.com/ellesmere.starchild/posts/97e133d4-36f8-...
Bluesky:
Tumblr: www.tumblr.com/ellesmerestarchild/779320129598242816/the-...
My blog:
Character Creation
Harvey Bullock (/ˈbʊlək/) is a fictional detective appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, commonly in association with the superhero Batman.
The character first appeared in Detective Comics #441 (June 1974) and was created by Archie Goodwin and Howard Chaykin.
In animation, he appeared throughout the DC Animated Universe, voiced by Robert Costanzo. He debuted in live-action in 2014 on Fox's television series Gotham, portrayed by Donal Logue.
Publication history
There is some ambiguity concerning the character's origins. Writer Doug Moench and artist Don Newton introduced Harvey Bullock in Batman #361 (July 1983) as a device to resolve the ongoing plotline with Gotham City's corrupt mayor Hamilton Hill, and subsequent Who's Who in the DC Universe entries acknowledged this as the new Bullock's first appearance.
However, in later years Batman fans began pointing out that a "Lt. Bullock" appeared in three panels of Detective Comics #441 (1974), written by Archie Goodwin, pencilled by Howard Chaykin, and published almost a decade before.
Moench admitted that he must have read this comic because he is an Archie Goodwin fan, but denied that Harvey Bullock is the same character. He argued that it is unlikely that he drew on Goodwin's Lt. Bullock even unconsciously, since there are discrepancies of both personality and continuity between his character and Goodwin's, and he distinctly remembers taking the name "Bullock" from guitarist Hiram Bullock.
Archie Goodwin is legally Harvey Bullock's sole creator; Moench said he decided not to contest this because he did not want to make a case against Goodwin's widow Anne Goodwin, whom he considers a friend.
Following the conclusion of the Hamilton Hill storyline, Moench decided he enjoyed writing Harvey Bullock enough to keep him on as a supporting character, which necessitated some softening of his original characterization as a corrupt cop.
Bullock was one of several Batman supporting cast members swept out of the Batman family of titles when Denny O'Neil became the Batman editor in 1986, but in 1987 writer Paul Kupperberg brought him into the Vigilante cast. Kupperberg recalled, "Harvey Bullock was a character very much in my wheelhouse, a wise-cracking loudmouth with a Brooklyn accent and a problem with authority, although he wasn't originally intended to be a permanent member of the Vigilante cast.
He was brought in for a guest-shot, as a character to help Vigilante's handler, Harry Stein, grease the wheels in Gotham City for them on whatever case they were on. I had fun writing him, and the interaction between Harvey and Harry Stein, another slob with his own way of doing things, clicked. I don't think they were using him much, if at all, in the Batman books by then, so we got permission from the Bat-office to have the character on semi-permanent loan for Vigilante and its successor title, Checkmate."
Fictional Character History
Harvey Bullock was named after a real-life television writer. Before the Crisis on Infinite Earths story line, Bullock was originally a corrupted detective. He was ordered by Mayor Hamilton Hill to sabotage Commissioner James Gordon’s career.
He would do so by pretending to be clumsy and ruining their plans on a stake. When Bullock accidentally gave Gordon a heart-attack, it changed Bullock. He turned over a new leaf and tried his best to make up for what he did.
Bullock later became a Bishop in the Checkmate Organization.
Origin – Post-Crisis
After Crisis on Infinite Earths, Harvey Bullock once again became a corrupt cop. He gained a reputation for taking bribes, police brutality, and ties to organized crimes, though his co-workers still believed him to be a good cop.
However, Bullock was very loyal to Commissioner Gordon from the very beginning, and helped Gordon foil the plans of many well-known criminals in Gotham City. Whenever Batman was not around, Bullock would take the role of bad cop to intimidate and threaten those he needed information from. His previous partner on the Gotham Police Department was Renee Montoya.
Later, after Commissioner Gordon is shot three times in the back, it is discovered that Gordon's shooter was formerly in the Chicago mob and had a grudge against Gordon. However, the GCPD lack the evidence to convict Gordon's shooter. Bullock gives up the location of Commissioner Gordon's shooter to the mafia, leading to the shooter's murder. After this event, Bullock resigned from the GCPD and occasionally worked as a private detective.
Batman: Cataclysm
In the Batman: Cataclysm story line, Bullock is confronting Anarky when an earthquake strikes. Both men survive but Harvey is severely injured, having had his arm impaled by a metal tube.
Despite this he is able to make it back to Gotham's police headquarters and rescue James Gordon from the rubble of his own office. Gotham city is later shut down.
During No Man's Land Bullock, along with Renee Montoya, decide to stay behind to assist Gordon.
One Year Later
After Infinite Crisis' part of the One Year Later story line, Bullock was allowed to rejoin the GCPD police force under the condition that he is not to make one mistake this time. Batman and Bullock have made peace and they both agreed to give each other a second chance.
Batman Beyond
In the future, Bullock's legacy lives on through his grandson.
⚡ Happy 🎯 Heroclix 💫 Friday! 👽
_____________________________
A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.
Secret Identity: N/A
Publisher: DC
First appearance: As Lieutenant Bullock: Detective Comics #441 (June 1974)
As Detective Harvey Bullock: Batman #361 (July 1983)
Created by:
As Lieutenant Bullock:
Archie Goodwin (writer)
Howard Chaykin (artist)
As Detective Harvey Bullock:
Doug Moench (writer)
Don Newton (artist)
The next generation Shuvalovs have made a comeback to the court with a great afternoon of poetry (and much, much gossip) hosted by Grafinya Zinaida Shuvalova! The host seemed not as much touched by the late Tzarevna's passing.
Another comeback has also been made by one of the honorary members of the royal family Baryshnya Varvara von Engelhardt. She seemed quite unsettled when her uncle Grigory Potemkin’s name was ever mentioned. Can she regain the very top of Empress’ favour?
Read more in
"Royal Treatment" plotline: docs.google.com/presentation/d/11w07wRtM64aT-slNCqxzs_0p8...
Visit us: maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Burning%20Embers/159/124/3313
(2) Outraged, Tzarevich Pavel demanded Golitsyna’s expulsion, although to both please her son and keep her confidante, the Empress let Knyaginya know that she has been “unwelcomed” from the court for 2 weeks.
Her letter of apology also reveals that she is expecting, which would seemingly be impossible since her husband is away. The remaining courtiers were left to wonder what has happened...
Learn more about our "Royal Treatment" plotline (#15): docs.google.com/presentation/d/11w07wRtM64aT-slNCqxzs_0p8...
Learn more about our "Sheremetev in Love" plotline (#13): docs.google.com/presentation/d/1S1L8JesWESwnS1_1ehXmTyc3k...
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Eltin: Hey, save some for me too!
This was a silly little photo story we played out on Siama's visit. Not much of a plotline or character development. LOL
Since morning and into the evening the palace staff were tirelessly, one could say in a rushed manner, clearing out the late Tzarevna Natalya's things, including her favourite floral painting, her pet Papilon's bed and the portraits of her parents.
Are the apartments expected to be refurbished? Is there a new contestant bride to arrive later this year already?
Follow our new plotline "Fortuna chooses Sophia": docs.google.com/presentation/d/1bruN4iUzo1SlG01Pw_HL0_V9x...
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So, after thinking my shoot with Ross went shockingly the week previous, we decided to meet up again and take a couple of shots.
However, we ended up going to see Avatar in 3D and I must say that despite the plotline not really representing much it is visually stunning and I hope James Cameron does go through on a sequel just so I can witness that level of visual beauty in the cinema again.
We then went to Ashton Lane in the West End to have a few drinks.
The key subject of the Imperial Affair, Graf Razumovsky is demoted immediately and “voluntarily” withdraws himself from court and Pavel’s life into one of his father’s remote estates.
Apparently, the disgraced Graf rode off at the darkest hour of the night with all his belongings...
The "Tzarevna is Expecting" Plotline is now officially concluded. Thank you all for your contributions, especially the 3 key players (R.I.P. Tzarevna Natalya)! Here is the link should you wish to see this entry (#34) or read again: docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_YiErkELGBmeIPXbRwcxHNaZl...
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The candles' light was dim, which only set more relaxed air in the room when the young Graf Sheremetev introduced the musical program for the evening.
The guests were eager as they have heard much of Sheremetev's talents both as a musician and a theatrical director. He did not disappoint!
The de facto head of her household, Knyaginya Golitsyna also seemed exceptionally eager to show her own musical prowess. Her musical technique was what you would expect of an accomplished lady... But the singing! Oh, it was hard to hear much but the many young lesser ranking listeners could not utter a sound. Did Knyaginya Golitsyna catch a cold, or is this her Achilles heel?
Knyaginya Dashkova could not but notice the silent, subtle yet simultaneously clear exchanges between young Graf Razumovsky and HIH Tzarevna Natalya. Could it be? A simple flirtation... Or a blooming affair?!
More in "Grand Duchess is Expecting" plotline: docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_YiErkELGBmeIPXbRwcxHNaZl...
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The candles' light was dim, which only set more relaxed air in the room when the young Graf Sheremetev introduced the musical program for the evening.
The guests were eager as they have heard much of Sheremetev's talents both as a musician and a theatrical director. He did not disappoint!
The de facto head of her household, Knyaginya Golitsyna also seemed exceptionally eager to show her own musical prowess. Her musical technique was what you would expect of an accomplished lady... But the singing! Oh, it was hard to hear much but the many young lesser ranking listeners could not utter a sound. Did Knyaginya Golitsyna catch a cold, or is this her Achilles heel?
Knyaginya Dashkova could not but notice the silent, subtle yet simultaneously clear exchanges between young Graf Razumovsky and HIH Tzarevna Natalya. Could it be? A simple flirtation... Or a blooming affair?!
More in "Grand Duchess is Expecting" plotline: docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_YiErkELGBmeIPXbRwcxHNaZl...
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2/ With much speculation of courtship circulating between Mlle Vorontsova and Sheremetev (he is rumoured to appear at her music soirée), Yusupov’s event seemed to prove otherwise. Young Graf Yaguzhinsky was quite bold in his advances creating amusement for the other guests (except for her cousin and chaperon Dashkova).
Sheremetev seemed disheartened but not as affected as a lover should be… Perhaps, the courtship rumours are false? The two seemed to engage in pleasant conversation at the dinner table discussing the music program to be featured enthusiastically.
In fact, Vorontsova suggested him to bring his opera protegé Zhemchugova then!
Learn more about our "Royal Treatment" plotline (#21): docs.google.com/presentation/d/11w07wRtM64aT-slNCqxzs_0p8...
Learn more about our "Sheremetev in Love" plotline (#15): docs.google.com/presentation/d/1S1L8JesWESwnS1_1ehXmTyc3k...
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Starting off the dinner cheerful, the recently returned Yusupov had to bring forth the allegations of domestic abuse towards his eldest sister the Duchess of Courland. This could jeopardize her diplomatic efforts, but is the life of her citizen, a fellow woman, worth it?..
Announcing new plotline "Duchess of Courland": docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Da2oYtHsHC78jNOznu_4YPUU6...
Learn what happened next in "Royal Treatment" (#17-18): docs.google.com/presentation/d/11w07wRtM64aT-slNCqxzs_0p8...
The young Graf took over his father who was still recovering in his dacha as a host to a masked ball in their Ostankino estate.
Find out what happened next in "Sheremetev in Love" plotline: docs.google.com/presentation/d/1S1L8JesWESwnS1_1ehXmTyc3k...
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(This is also my entry for the Miscellaneous category in CCCX)
Deep in the heart of the Great Galapona Desert of Loreos, far from any trade routes or other touches of civilisation, stands a tower. This great pinnacle of sandstone, so out of place in the empty desert sands, is usually dismissed as a mirage by those who happen to stumble upon it. The local Bedouin people know of it, but also know not to mention it, because its occupier is a man who values his secrecy. He is also a man not to be crossed.
The occupier is a wizard who goes by the name of Salamackia. It is unusual for a wizard to be living in Loreos, because magic is not only outlawed, but so detested that its adherents do not usually live very long. However, Salamackia has two traits which keep him alive. The first is that he is deniable. Few know who he is and those that do cannot find him. The second is that he is proficient in his use of magic and knowledgeable of the workings of Roawia. This makes him useful. Deniable and useful wizards like Salamackia are seen as an asset, rather than lawbreakers by the ruling elite, so their existence is tolerated - at least until they stop being useful, or deniable.
The tower, despite its somewhat ornate outer appearance, is quite simply furnished on the inside with the exception of one room, the library. It is in this great library at the top of the tower that our dealings with Salamackia begin…
Ok, I couldn’t stay away from the Lands of Classic Castle (LCC) for too long. What I’ve decided to do is a series of six builds called Salamackia’s Story, which will all be entries for CCCX, but will also form the start of a new plotline within my main LCC story. I hope these six builds will also provide self contained interest for those not following my main LCC storyline – A Tale of Thomas Arrowford.
5 agonizing days later, the screams stop… But no outcry of a newborn is heard.
The Grand Duchess develops high fever and in delusions she has a moment of euphoria before taking final breath.
The room is left in a state of complete disarray - the light is dim, the blood around the body has soaked the sheets multiple times over and the stench is unbearable unless you've gotten used to it...
Learn what happened next in "Tzarevna is Expecting" plotline: docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_YiErkELGBmeIPXbRwcxHNaZl...
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Yet again, Graf Sheremetev seemed to be disinterested in starting any fling or affair with any of the masked ladies present, despite being still single and highly eligible!
There was one lady that seemed to exude much charm behind her mask with her figure, occasional smile and graceful dancing. Who could she be?
According to early arrivals, the young host seemed to be acquainted, but they only exchanged one dance before separating from each other, as if deliberately, to go unnoticed.
Learn more in "Sheremetev in Love" plotline: docs.google.com/presentation/d/1S1L8JesWESwnS1_1ehXmTyc3k...
Visit us: maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Burning%20Embers/159/124/3313
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Pleeeeease excuse the cringe and the sloppiness, I was on a time crunch and had to scribble it in on a ginormous piece of paper for my art class and was in a rush😂 also sorry bout the cringy plotline and basic characters, it’s all I had😂
1/ Yusupov’s Magnificent Soirée was dominated by the return of the Empress’ recently replaced ex-favourite (and rumoured secret husband) Knyaz Potemkin. Dashkova, who has publicly expressed discontent with the Empress’ choice of favourites, employed several non-verbal provocation strategies to seem superior.
Potemkin did not seem to mind or respond to said provocation, except for apparent loss of appetite which was quickly recovered after Dashkova left the dining table!
Learn more about our "Royal Treatment" plotline (#21): docs.google.com/presentation/d/11w07wRtM64aT-slNCqxzs_0p8...
Learn more about our "Sheremetev in Love" plotline (#15): docs.google.com/presentation/d/1S1L8JesWESwnS1_1ehXmTyc3k...
Have you noticed any heated encounters between certain RP characters? Chances are, they were part of a plot line!
Check out current story arcs and how you can get involved: stpetersburginsl.wixsite.com/stpetersburginsl/plotlines
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Your childheart came here to to write a story
The one you are meant to live
With all its cast of characters and dramatic unfoldings
Romances, heartbreaks, adventures,
Triumphs and tragedies
Heroism and horrors,
We choose such a variety of themes
Beware the greater narrative
Which contains the multitude in Itself
Where we can lose ourselves
Pay too much attention
Get sucked into the plotlines of others
Become unwitting extras
Extracted from our own Imagination
Incentivized with fame and fortune
Lured into ambitious participation
The mind is relinquished for a shiny prize
As the heart is denied again and again
The storyteller is slowly poisoned
Into submission away from the one true purpose
To be the designer of Its own destiny
Zombie- like compliance activates massive herding
Confusion coaxes obedience through lies
Storylines are smashed apart and rerouted
Comfort and order become cages of refuge
The few monopolize the ignorant many
Darkness and fear breed distrust
Hopelessness spreads its false inevitability
But always travelling in that glorious night sky
Filled with the blaze of a million suns
Your star waits to lead you home
Re-activate the inner creative urge
Resusitate that inner playful child
Eager to pour out with epic proportion
While staying true to the undying quest:
“Know Thyself”
GF April 18, 2022
ArtQuesting is simply the process of allowing a freeflow process to happen while exploring inner thoughts and feelings. The message of this piece was personal and revealing but there is always a greater message that pours out for me to share with you. Today's encouragment is to remind you that your story is there inside of you always waiting to be experienced and shared. The power of the whole Universe and the symbol of the star are always there to draw from. Remember John Lennon's famous song line:
"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you will join us and the world will live as one."
To dream from the heart and bring them forth is our birthright and the more we practice, the more profound life becomes.
Sending out love to all of you!!!
Remember, if you are not actively imagining the world you want, there are those all too ready to build it for you and cast you involuntarily into its design:
Jean Elaine Grey was born the second daughter of John and Elaine Grey. She had an older sister, Sara Grey-Bailey. John Grey was a professor at Bard College in upstate New York. Depictions of Jean's childhood and her relations with her family have shown a stable, loving family life growing up.
Emergence of powers and joining the X-Men
Jean's mutant powers of telepathy and telekinesis first manifest when her best friend is hit by a car and killed. Jean mentally links with her friend and nearly dies as well. The event leaves her comatose, and she is brought back to consciousness when her parents seek the help of powerful mutant telepath, Charles Xavier. Xavier blocks her telepathy until she is old enough to be able to control it, leaving her with access only to her telekinetic powers.
Xavier later recruits her as a teenager to be part of his X-Men team as "Marvel Girl", the team's sole female member. After several missions with the X-Men, Xavier removes Jean's mental blocks and she is able to use and control her telepathic powers. She begins a relationship with teammate Cyclops, which persists as her main romantic relationship, though she also develops a mutual secret attraction to a later addition to the team, Wolverine.
Phoenix Force and first death
During an emergency mission in space, the X-Men find their shuttle damaged. Jean pilots the shuttle back to Earth, but is exposed to fatal levels of radiation. Dying, but determined to save Cyclops and her friends, Jean calls out for help and is answered by the cosmic entity, the Phoenix Force.
The Phoenix Force, one of the most powerful life forces in the universe, is moved by Jean's wish to save herself and her friends. It takes the form of a duplicate body to house Jean's psyche. The duplication is so exact that the Phoenix Force believes itself to be Jean Grey, and places Jean's dying body in a healing cocoon. This cocoon is later described as a Phoenix Egg.
The ship crashes in Jamaica Bay, with the other X-Men unharmed. The Phoenix Force, as Jean Grey, emerges in a new costume and adopts the new codename "Phoenix", with immense cosmic powers. Meanwhile, the cocoon containing the real Jean Grey sinks to the bottom of the bay, unnoticed.
Phoenix continues her life as Jean Grey with the other X-Men, joining them on missions and saving the universe. During "The Dark Phoenix Saga", Phoenix becomes overwhelmed and corrupted by her first taste of evil and transforms into a force of total destruction, called "Dark Phoenix", inadvertently killing the inhabitants of a planetary system, after consuming its star, and jeopardizing the entire universe. However, Jean's personality manages to take control and Phoenix commits suicide to ensure the universe's safety.
Revival
Upon its suicide by way of a disintegration ray, the Phoenix Force disperses into its original form and a fragment locates the still-healing Jean at the bottom of Jamaica Bay. In trying to bond with her, Jean senses its memories of death and destruction as Dark Phoenix and rejects it, causing it to bond with and animate a lifeless clone of Jean Grey created by the villain Mister Sinister.
Sinister created the clone to couple with Cyclops to create genetically superior mutants. Named "Madelyne Pryor", the unaware clone meets Cyclops in a situation engineered by Sinister and the two fall in love, marry, and have a child, Nathan Christopher Summers. Meanwhile, the cocoon is discovered and retrieved by the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. Jean emerges with no memory of the actions of the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix.
The Avengers and Fantastic Four tell her of what happened and that she was believed dead until now. She is reunited with the original X-Men and convinces them to form the new superhero team X-Factor, reusing her "Marvel Girl" codename.
Madelyne is angered over Cyclops's decision to lead X-Factor and neglect his family. Though Jean encourages Cyclops to return to Madelyne, he finds their house abandoned and assumes that Madelyne has left him and taken their infant son.
Cyclops returns to X-Factor and he and Jean continue their relationship, but the Phoenix Force's impersonation, and his marrying Madelyne, damaged their mutual trust. The team's adventures continue throughout the series, culminating in the line-wide "Inferno" crossover. Madelyne reappears, now nearly insane and with powers awakened by a demonic pact, calling herself the Goblyn Queen.
Learning of her true identity and purpose as a clone created by Mister Sinister drove her completely insane and she plans to sacrifice Nathan Christopher to achieve greater power and unleash literal Hell on Earth. While attempting to stop her, Jean is reunited with the other X-Men, who are happy to learn that she is alive, particularly Wolverine, reminding Jean of her unaddressed feelings for him.
Jean and Madelyne confront each other, and Madelyne attempts to kill them both. Jean manages to survive only by absorbing the remnant of the Phoenix Force housed within Madelyne, giving her both Madelyne's memories and the Phoenix's memories from "The Dark Phoenix Saga".
Return to the X-Men and marriage to Cyclops
Unsure of herself since returning to life, Jean finds possessing the Phoenix Force and Madelyne's memories to be difficult. Cyclops proposes to her and she meets her alternate future daughter Rachel Summers (who goes by the codename "Phoenix" as well and is also able to tap into the Phoenix Force), but Jean rejects them both out of the feeling that they indicate that her life is predetermined.
Jean had learned during the Inferno event that her rejecting the Phoenix Force caused Madelyne to wake; Cyclops admits to Susan Storm Richards that Jean sometimes wishes that the Fantastic Four had not found her, and that he does not know how to communicate with her.
When X-Factor unites with the X-Men, Jean joins the Gold Team, led by Storm. During this time, she no longer uses a codename, instead being referred to by her civilian name. After some time, she makes up with Rachel, welcoming her into her life, and proposes to Cyclops and the two marry.
On their honeymoon, the couple is immediately psychically transported 2000 years into the future to raise Cyclops's son Nathan, who had been transported to the future as an infant in hopes of curing him of a deadly virus. Jean adopts the identity of "Redd" along with Cyclops ("Slym") and they raise Nathan Christopher for twelve years before they are sent back into their bodies on their wedding honeymoon.
Jean learns that a time-displaced Rachel had used her powers to transport them to the future to protect Nathan, and per Rachel's request, Jean adopts the codename "Phoenix" once again to establish it as a symbol of good after all the bad it had caused.
Meanwhile, her psychic and telekinetic abilities begin to grow and she begins using the iconic green and gold Phoenix costume again. Jean also met another alternate future child of hers and Scott's: the immensely powerful Nathan Grey, who accidentally revived the psionic ghost of Madelyne Pryor, leading to another confrontation between the two women.
Onslaught
In Bishop's original timeline before he ends up in the present he finds the X-Men's war room and finds a garbled distress signal from Jean about a traitor destroying the X-Men from within. Meanwhile, in the present, the X-Men begin to hear increasing news about a malevolent entity called Onslaught.
Jean first sees Onslaught as a psionic image with the rest of the X-Men after Onslaught coerces Gateway to kidnap Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, and Iceman. He later appears to her again in a similar way after rescuing her and Gambit from Bastion and offers her a chance to join him.
Onslaught makes his first full appearance to Jean on the astral plane and shows her how humanity is closing in on mutants as well as revealing that Xavier was in love with her while she was a student to convince her to join him. He then telepathically brands his name to her mind when she refused and asks him his name.
When Juggernaut comes to the mansion with information about Onslaughts true identity but has a mental block preventing him from divulging it, Jean enters his mind and helps him to remember who Onslaught really is and to her horror she discovers that Onslaught is really Professor X, having gone insane ever since wiping Magneto's mind.
Professor Xavier calls the X-Men together for a meeting and Jean tries unsuccessfully to rally the X-Men against him before he manifests Onslaught. While Onslaught easily overtakes the rest of the X-Men, Jean escapes to the war room and sends out the distress signal that Bishop found in the future.
After a massive battle against Jean and the rest of the X-Men, Onslaught escapes to carry out his plans. After Onslaught nearly kills the X-Men they team up with the Avengers to make a plan to stop him, knowing full well that it may come down to them killing Xavier if the world is to survive.
Jean accompanies Cyclops, Archangel, and Psylocke to Muir Island where they and Moira McTaggert discover the Xavier Protocols, secret plans that Xavier made to kill any of the individual X-Men should anyone become a threat against the world. Meanwhile,
Jean's earlier distress signal makes it to X-Factor, Excalibur, and X-Force. After returning to New York, Jean works closely with Reed Richards to help build up defenses against Onslaught as well as to help create the psionic armor that could block Xavier's telepathic powers as seen in the Xavier Protocols.
When Jean senses that Xavier has been freed from Onslaught and is going to confront him on his own, she and Cyclops bring together the rest of the X-Men to back him up. The rest of the Avengers and Fantastic Four join them in a final stand against Onslaught before he completely destroys the world.
In a final act of desperation Jean finds Hulk and locks away Bruce Banner's mind, leaving only the Hulk in control so he can fight Onslaught unencumbered. With the vast majority of earth's heroes missing and assumed dead after Onslaught is finally defeated, Jean and Cyclops open their home to Quicksilver and his daughter and try to help the X-Men to get their lives back together.
New X-Men
Following Cyclops's possession by the mutant villain Apocalypse and apparent death, Jean continues with the X-Men, but is distraught by the loss of her husband. She later learns that she is an "Omega-level" mutant with unlimited potential.
Jean begins to suspect that Cyclops may still be alive and with the help of Nathan Summers (now the aged superhero "Cable"), is able to locate and free Cyclops of his possession by Apocalypse. The couple return to the X-Men as part of the Xavier Institute's teaching staff to a new generation of mutants.
While Jean finds she is slowly able to tap into the powers of the Phoenix Force once again, her marriage to Scott begins to fail. Jean and Wolverine address their long-unspoken mutual attraction, deciding it is best not to act on their feelings; Cyclops grows further alienated from Jean due to her growing powers and institute responsibilities and seeks consolation from the telepathic Emma Frost to address his disillusionment and his experiences while possessed by Apocalypse.
These therapy sessions lead to a "psychic affair" between Scott and Emma. Jean's discovery of the psychic affair results in a confrontation between her and Emma, though ultimately Jean realizes that Emma truly loves Scott.
Second death
In a final confrontation with a traitor at the institute (the X-Men's teammate Xorn, posing as Magneto) Jean fully realizes and assumes complete control of the powers of the Phoenix Force, but is killed in a last-ditch lethal attack by Xorn.
Jean dies, telling Scott "to live". However, after her funeral, Scott rejects Emma and her offer to run the school together. This creates a dystopian future where all life and natural evolution is under assault by the infectious, villainous, sentient bacteria "Sublime".
Jean is resurrected in this future timeline and becomes the fully realized White Phoenix of the Crown, using the abilities of the Phoenix Force to defeat Sublime and eliminate the dystopic future by reaching back in time and telling Cyclops to move on.
This leads him to accept Emma's love and her offer to run the school together. Jean then reconciles with Cyclops and fully bonds with the Phoenix Force and ascends to a higher plane of existence called the "White Hot Room".
Endsong
A weakened Phoenix Force returns to reanimate Jean. Jean tries to convince the Phoenix Force to let her go so they can return to the White Hot Room together, but once again the Phoenix Force takes over. Jean lets Wolverine find her and tries to convince him to kill her again before the Phoenix does more damage.
The Shi'ar track the Phoenix Force and make an alliance with Storm to find her and defeat her. Jean takes Wolverine to the North Pole before the Shi'ar can kill her and convinces him to kill her. He stabs her numerous times but Phoenix keeps reanimating her, prompting Jean to dive deep into the ice and freeze herself.
The Phoenix Force leaves her body and once again assumes Jean's form to tempt Cyclops to attack her so she can absorb his optic blasts and become strong again. When the Phoenix Force merges with and overwhelms Emma Frost, Cyclops frees Jean from the ice. Once freed Jean ejects the Phoenix from Emma and accepts that she is one with the Phoenix Force.
After feeling the love from the X-Men, the Phoenix relents and returns with Jean back to the White Hot Room. Before she departs, Jean and Cyclops share a telepathic emotional farewell.
Postmortem manifestations
Though she had yet to fully return, the Phoenix Force and Jean continued to manifest themselves, particularly the Phoenix through the red-haired, green-eyed "mutant messiah" who slightly resembles Jean named Hope Summers, and Jean briefly appears in a vision to Emma Frost from the White Hot Room, warning the X-Men to "prepare".
She again appears in a vision to Cyclops when he is overwhelmed by the power of Dark Phoenix, helping him abandon the power so that it can pass on to its true host. After Nightcrawler is fatally wounded by the Crimson Pirates, Jean appears to him along with Amanda Sefton and the recently deceased Wolverine to help coax him back to life.
Jean's spirit begins to manifest in a more straightforward and aggressive manner to the time-displaced Jean from an alternate timeline, seemingly training her for the arrival of the Phoenix. However, after the younger Jean begins to ignore her, she possesses the time displaced Jean and uses her as a means to ambush Emma Frost.
Return
Strange psych occurrences around the world, which include a large bird flaring out from the sun and an explosion on the moon, raise red flags for the X-Men, who quickly launch an investigation of these events.
After a string of bizarre encounters with familiar enemies, many of them considered deceased, the X-Men come to one conclusion: the Phoenix Force is back on Earth. The X-Men also discover that psychics are going missing or falling ill, which prompts the team to investigate the grave of Jean Grey. As they find the coffin of their long-dead teammate empty, they race to locate the Phoenix before it can find a suitable host.
As it turns out, with the time-displaced teen Jean Grey out of the Phoenix Force's way, the cosmic entity has already resurrected the present adult Jean Grey. However, she doesn't recall her life as a mutant and an X-Man, and terrible visions from her previous life have left Jean unsure of the difference between reality and fiction.
As she lies inside of what appears to be a Phoenix Egg, the X-Men theorize that the strange psych occurrences are subconscious cries for help made by Jean Grey and that they must try to stop the Phoenix from merging with their old friend.
Old Man Logan is able to make Jean Grey remember her true life and she learns about the fate of her family and several of her friends, among them Cyclops. As Jean faces the Phoenix Force, she is finally able to convince the cosmic entity to stop bringing her back and let her go. Alive once again, Jean is reunited with her friends as the Phoenix Force journeys back to space.
Restored to life, Jean gathers some of the greatest minds on Earth together so that she can read their minds to plan her next move. Recognizing that there has been a sudden surge in anti-mutant sentiment, to the point where there are plans to abort pregnancies if the mutant gene is detected, Jean announces her plans to establish a more official mutant nation, making it clear that she will not establish a geographic location for said nation as past examples make it clear that doing so just makes mutants a target. To support her in this goal, she assembles a team including Nightcrawler, X-23 and Namor, but is unaware that her actions are being observed by Cassandra Nova.
House of X / Dawn of X
The adult Jean returns to using her original Marvel Girl codename and wears her second green-and-yellow Marvel Girl costume. She is sent as part of a strike team to outer space to stop a satellite near the sun from being used as a Sentinel factory.
Sentinels crush Jean's escape pod and she dies, but is resurrected into a cloned body. She is also a member of the Quiet Council, Krakoa's provisional government. Following the events of House of X, Jean briefly joins the Krakoan incarnation of X-Force, before resigning in protest of Beast's actions in Terra Verde.
Following through the tournament for the new host of the Phoenix Force, the Phoenix chose Maya Lopez, the hero known as Echo. As Maya, Jean Grey called out to her from Krakoa with a word of advice.
After Maya took on the Phoenix Force, Jean ordered Wolverine to leave her alone and return home, as he said he would kill anyone who took on the Phoenix Force. She then reached out to Maya as she flew off, and told the young woman not to go on this journey alone as the Phoenix prefers loners and isolated figures it can better influence to carry out its own agenda. Jean also told Maya if she wants to keep her soul as the new Phoenix, she has to make the Phoenix her own.
Powers and abilities
Jean Grey is an Omega-level mutant, and at her highest and strongest potential was fully merged with the Phoenix Force and with it was able to defeat even Galactus.
Empathy
Jean is a powerful empath, as she can feel and manipulate emotions of other people, as shown when her power first emerged as she felt her friend Annie Richardson slowly dying. Jean can also connect people's minds to the feelings of others and make them feel the pain they inflicted.
Telepathy
When her powers first manifested, Jean was unable to cope with her telepathic abilities, forcing Professor Charles Xavier to suppress her access to it altogether. Instead, he chose to train her in the use of her psychokinetic abilities while allowing her telepathy to grow at its natural rate before reintroducing it. When the Professor hid to prepare for the Z'Nox, he reopened Jean's telepathic abilities, which was initially explained by writers as Xavier 'sharing' some of his telepathy with her.
As an alpha-level telepath, Jean Grey can detect and read the thoughts of others, project her own thoughts into other's minds, form psychic links with other beings, control others' minds so as to manipulate their physical functions, mentally stun opponents with bolts of pure psionic force, cast near-flawless mental illusions, and project her mind and the minds of others onto the astral plane.
At close range, she can manipulate almost any number of minds; however, she can only take full possession of another's mind one at a time and can only do so if she is within that being's physical presence.
Jean is also one of the few telepaths skilled enough to communicate with animals (animals with high intelligence, such as dolphins, dogs, and ravens). As a side effect of her telepathy, she has an eidetic memory. Jean was able, through telepathic therapy with the comatose Jessica Jones, to grant Jessica immunity to the Purple Man's mind control abilities, despite his powers being chemical in nature rather than psychic.
When Jean absorbed Psylocke's specialized telepathic powers, her own telepathy was increased to the point that she could physically manifest her telepathy as a psionic firebird whose claws could inflict both physical and mental damage. She briefly developed a psychic shadow form like Psylocke's, with a gold Phoenix emblem over her eye instead of the Crimson Dawn mark possessed by Psylocke.
Jean briefly lost her telekinesis to Psylocke during this exchange, but her telekinetic abilities later came back in full and at a far stronger level than before.[volume & issue needed] It was later stated that Jean has been an Omega Level telepath.
Telekinesis
Jean possesses a high-level of telekinetic ability that enables her to psionically levitate and rapidly move about all manner of animate and inanimate matter. She can use her telekinetic abilities on herself or others to simulate the power of flight or levitation, stimulate molecules to increase friction, create protective force fields out of psychokinetic energy, or project her telekinetic energy as purely concussive force.
The outer limits of her telekinetic power have never been clearly established, though she was capable of lifting approximately fifty tons of rubble with some strain. Jean was later stated to have become an Omega Level Telekinetic.
Psychic Energy Synthesis
Jean's younger self who had been brought from the past into the present by an older Hank McCoy eventually found an entirely new usage of her powers separate from the Phoenix Force. The teenage Marvel Girl learned she has the ability to harness ambient psychic energy and channel it into powerful blasts of force, which are a combination of both her telepathy and telekinesis.
Its potency is such that she can match and overpower the likes of Gladiator, magistrate of the Shi'ar, with relative ease. When using this ability Jean's whole body glows with pink psychic energy, obscuring her human form.
Telekinetic weapons
Under the tutelage of Psylocke, teenage Marvel Girl has learned the ability to create psionic weapons that damage a target either physically, mentally or both in some point. She showed skill in constructing multiple types of psionic weapons that differ in size, length and power which she uses in combat.
Phoenix Force
The relationship between Jean Grey and the Phoenix Force (and the nature of the powers she has) is portrayed in a variety of ways throughout the character's history. In the initial plotline of the Phoenix being a manifestation of Jean's true potential, these powers are considered her own, becoming Earth 616's first cosmic superheroine.
However, since the retcon of the Phoenix as a separate entity from Jean Grey, depictions of these powers vary; these include Jean being one of many hosts to the Phoenix and "borrowing" its "Phoenix powers" during this time, being a unique host to the Phoenix, and being one with the Phoenix.
She is later described as the only one currently able to hold the title of "White Phoenix of the Crown" among the many past, present, and future hosts of the Phoenix. Jean — both young and adult versions — is also the only character ever to force the Phoenix against its own cosmic will to do anything while not presently a host to its powers.
In one instance Jean forcibly ripped the Phoenix out of Emma Frost and imposed its status upon herself. Young Jean was able to keep her psyche anchored in the Phoenix's mind postmortem despite the Phoenix's own efforts to forcibly remove her after it murdered her. Jean then subsequently forced the Phoenix to resurrect her after manipulating the Phoenix's mental landscape against it.
Over the years, Jean's abilities while bonded to the Phoenix Force have fluctuated, but the Women of Marvel: Celebrating Seven Decades Handbook has detailed what Jean is capable of as Phoenix:
While empowered by the Phoenix Force, Grey has total telekinetic control of matter at the molecular level, allowing her to manipulate atomic structures on a universal scale. She can generate any form of energy in seemingly unlimited amounts, as well as absorb energy from sources as great as a supernova or even convert her physical form to pure energy and back again.
She can also exist in virtually any environment without harm and create space/time warps to travel through hyperspace or traverse the timestream, and her telepathic abilities are also vastly enhanced. When using her power, the Phoenix Force will manifest itself around Grey in the form of a bird of cosmic flames, the size of the bird varying with the amount of energy she is using.
These flames can even manifest in seemingly impossible situations, such as the vacuum of space or underwater. This fire apparently does not require oxygen to burn, and burns so intensely that matter is consumed without by-products such as ash. The cosmic fire is a literal punctuation to the Phoenix's purpose to "burn away what doesn't work", as well as being described as "burning through lies and deception". The Phoenix Force can also resurrect the dead under some conditions, and absorb the life force from other sentient beings to bolster its own.
The Phoenix Force also seems to render its host unaging and, at least in some adaptations, enhances the physical strength of its avatar to superhuman levels; in certain incarnations, Jean, namely while acting as Dark Phoenix, seemed to possess some level of superhuman strength.
Resurrection
For one reason or another, Jean Grey (both young and old) has, on more than one occasion, been repeatedly resurrected by either the Phoenix or apparently her sheer force of will. In some depictions, these resurrections are immediately after she or whoever she is reviving is killed, while other depictions indicate that a resurrection must occur at a "correct" time, sometimes taking a century.
During the height of the Psych Wars, Young Jean was able to forcibly make the Phoenix Force restore her to life, despite the Phoenix's adamant resolve not to do so, completely recreating her body after it had been vaporized.
After her body was taken over and completely devoured by a Poison, a small part of Jean's mind survived and, despite itself, was able to infect the whole Poison Hive and destroy it from the inside out, subsequently using nothing but her mind to reconstruct her body. This leaves Jean believing that she may not even be human anymore. This is not the first time Jean was resurrected without the Phoenix; in one instance, she was even able to fully resurrect herself after being clinically dead completely independent of the Phoenix Force.
In their most recent meeting, Jean tells the Phoenix Force that she should have died on the shuttle, and asks it to not resurrect her again.
Miscellaneous abilities
Jean Grey is a trained pilot and proficient unarmed combatant. She also has some degree of teaching ability, experience as a fashion model, and training in psychology.
⚡ Happy 🎯 Heroclix 💫 Friday! 👽
_____________________________
A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.
Secret Identity: Jean Elaine Grey
Publisher: Marvel Comics
First appearance: The X-Men #1 (Sept. 1963)
Created by Stan Lee (writer)
Jack Kirby (artist/co-plotter)
Urf! While we are most often pleased and, at times, even amazed at the quality of these very small HeroClix figurines, the Jean Grey is not good. The head and face are far too large and that, combined with her expression, makes Jean look like a gargoyle. The paint ops are sloppy as well. Okay, ending complaints now.
See Jean in action in the Paprihaven storyline such as in issue 1474:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/paprihaven/45624685874/]
And the inevitable event in 1484:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/paprihaven/46055356464/]
See Jean in previous Bijou Planks appearances including BP 2018 Day 179:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/paprihaven/41245771850/]
And BP 2019 Day 234:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/paprihaven/48599086862/]
And BP 2019 Day 359:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/paprihaven/49275025917/]
(2)The Savoyard Delegation was represented by their Ambassador, half-brother of King of Sardinia - Duc de Chablais. The Empress was very pleased with their gift - a stomacher brooch that was prepared for her, and was pleasantly surprised how grown and pretty his daughter was.
Learn more about our "Royal Treatment" plotline (#13): docs.google.com/presentation/d/11w07wRtM64aT-slNCqxzs_0p8...
Learn more about our "Sheremetev in Love" plotline (#13): docs.google.com/presentation/d/1S1L8JesWESwnS1_1ehXmTyc3k...
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i have just finished watching the lovely bones
i could not have forseen this. i am sitting at my desk with tears streaming down my cheeks. i don’t cry at movies much either.
i didn’t think i was going to watch this movie at all. i read the book in ninth grade, and recall the moment i opened the cover. i picked this book off the outside reading list and started to read in my english class. if you have read the book, you will understand what i mean when i say, a few pages in, i was thoroughly startled and disturbed in every sense of the word. i still remember feeling as though my legs had disappeared from under me, and not in the whimsical sense. in the sense of pure, immeasurable feeling; the kind that only a certain kind of book can give you. my head felt light and nauseous and i remember feeling like i could pass out. i was thirteen, and it was a heavy plotline. when i finished reading a few days later, i was home. i concluded i did not like this book because of how much it enhanced my paranoia and disturbed me, like i said, in every sense of the word. i did not think i was going to watch this movie at all.
but i watched it tonight, and yes i am sitting here typing this having cried just a few minutes ago. the movie is beautiful and moving, completely unlike the way i recall the book from reading it more than two years ago. i will not say any more because i’m aware the movie is not even in theaters yet, and i don’t want to ruin it.
Amidst the discussion on idea of our ability to adapt to the environment and "family tree" of all living organisms as proposed by Pallas, unbeknownst to the courtiers then, the Vice-Chancellor's only daughter was suffering from heartbreak after a short-lived fling with aknown womanizer (it's not known who but Knyaz Alexander N. Dolgorukov is suspected). Afterwards, some staff swore they saw her sob silently in the hallway before returning home. Certainly, it wasn't a fling for her!
When someone mentioned her decision to sponsor the poor Smolnyi Institute final years to get higher education in maths & botany, Dashkova seemed most eager to return to the discussion topic. Is she hiding something? Is her sponsorship more than just advancing young girls' education? Regardless of real intentions, she certainly showed herself unable to skillfully "adapt" to court intrigues...
Later on the same day Dashkova's tea salon took place, Tzarevich Pavel eagerly left the capital, feeling a sense of (timed) freedom.
What could await him there? Certainly, meeting his admired relative King Frederick the Great was at the top of things he'd like to do!
NB: Pavel's events will be halted for the duration of his absence from Saint Petersburg until his return announcement; follow our newest plotline to learn more "Fortuna chooses Sophia": bit.ly/2X2Nb9x
Sunny days
Sweeping the clouds away
On my way to where the air is sweet.
Can you tell me how to get
How to get to Sesame Street?
(Did I have you singing that song instead of reading it?)
November 10 Is Sesame Street Day
This November 10th is Sesame Street Day! Did you know that Sesame Street is the most widely viewed kids’ show in the world? Though initially meant to simply be fun and educational, the show has evolved into an international cultural phenomenon. Let’s use this day to spell out our love for this unforgettable program!
History of Sesame Street Day
The seed of the idea that would become Sesame Street was first planted in talks between the television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett, the vice president of the Carnegie Foundation. During these conversations, Cooney spoke about her desire to leverage the ability of television shows to capture and keep children’s attention with the promotion of positive social values.
Following a period of extensive creative and scientific development, the show we all now know and love would begin to take shape. It was decided that Sesame Street would rely greatly on research processes in order to better inform various aspects of the program, spanning across the introduction of new characters, plotlines, and production design. This strategy would prove to be not only innovative, but wildly successful as well; Sesame Street would premiere on November 10th, 1969 as an immediate sensation.
The show would dominate the cultural terrain of children’s television in the ensuing decades. As its audience grew, so did its capacity and willingness to address increasingly complicated social, emotional, and ethical issues. Though not without some instances of controversy, Sesame Street has remained a pillar of constructive, educational programming with a unique ability to appeal to children and adults alike. However, as the general media landscape has experienced exponential growth in the 21st century, the show has in turn found itself faced with stiffer competition by other children’s television productions.
As a result, Sesame Street no longer commands the same authority as in past decades, and it has even faced its fair share of financial troubles. Still, it is hard to imagine a world where children (and grown-ups) everywhere don’t carry fond memories of days spent learning and laughing with the whole gang on Sesame Street.
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(2) Tzarevich Pavel has just given away his wife's body to the priests to prepare for the funeral and has already gone into mourning. Displeased with his mother and all courtiers, he eventually left.
Read what happened next in
"Tzarevna is Expecting" plotline: docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_YiErkELGBmeIPXbRwcxHNaZl...
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Looking at this now, it kinda looks like I just took a screenshot while an old Disney movie was playing or something. Guess that goes to show how much the OLC understands the older Disney spirit (which no longer exists here in the west sadly).
Amidst all the radical and infuriating changes Disney does, it's honestly a miracle the Tokyo Disney Resort is not owned by them. For the most part, maintenance, theming, quality, and especially staff, are LEAGUES above Disney management. Disneysea's saving grace is the originality. Walt used to have completely original ideas for his rides that didn't have movie origins, as crazy as that sounds today, and OLC understands that concept well.
The most accurate way I can describe this ride is if It's A Small World was made revolving around themes of Aladdin and The Odyssey. With a full animatronic lineup, Sinbad's storybook voyage has the charm of a Fantasyland dark ride while having a completely original plotline. With incredibly low lighting I got this side shot and against all odds, didn't have to deal with noise.
And like older, and more original, Disney rides it has it's own signature theme. Though it can't possibly hold a candle to pieces like Grim Grinning Ghosts or Imagination, it does a good job of still conveying that old magic. The piece is called "Compass to your heart".
I hate Disney
Location: University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong
Intersection (對倒) is a novella by Hong Kong's veteran literary writer Liu Yichang 劉 以鬯 in 1972. It reflects a state of cultural quality of Hong Kong which is filmic, visual with elements mutually synchronizing, contradictory, fragmentary, exclusive, but all-embracing. With the story set in the early 1970s of Hong Kong using a novel style of non-narrative, free association and parallel plotlines, the novella Intersection narrates two characters having no connection.
Canon EOS 1V HS
Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L II USM
Kentmere 400
Stand Development
R09 One Shot (1+100)
1 hour @ 18˚C
(This is also my entry for the Miscellaneous category in CCCX)
Deep in the heart of the Great Galapona Desert of Loreos, far from any trade routes or other touches of civilisation, stands a tower. This great pinnacle of sandstone, so out of place in the empty desert sands, is usually dismissed as a mirage by those who happen to stumble upon it. The local Bedouin people know of it, but also know not to mention it, because its occupier is a man who values his secrecy. He is also a man not to be crossed.
The occupier is a wizard who goes by the name of Salamackia. It is unusual for a wizard to be living in Loreos, because magic is not only outlawed, but so detested that its adherents do not usually live very long. However, Salamackia has two traits which keep him alive. The first is that he is deniable. Few know who he is and those that do cannot find him. The second is that he is proficient in his use of magic and knowledgeable of the workings of Roawia. This makes him useful. Deniable and useful wizards like Salamackia are seen as an asset, rather than lawbreakers by the ruling elite, so their existence is tolerated - at least until they stop being useful, or deniable.
The tower, despite its somewhat ornate outer appearance, is quite simply furnished on the inside with the exception of one room, the library. It is in this great library at the top of the tower that our dealings with Salamackia begin…
Ok, I couldn’t stay away from the Lands of Classic Castle (LCC) for too long. What I’ve decided to do is a series of six builds called Salamackia’s Story, which will all be entries for CCCX, but will also form the start of a new plotline within my main LCC story. I hope these six builds will also provide self contained interest for those not following my main LCC storyline – A Tale of Thomas Arrowford.
The candles' light was dim, which only set more relaxed air in the room when the young Graf Sheremetev introduced the musical program for the evening.
The guests were eager as they have heard much of Sheremetev's talents both as a musician and a theatrical director. He did not disappoint!
The de facto head of her household, Knyaginya Golitsyna also seemed exceptionally eager to show her own musical prowess. Her musical technique was what you would expect of an accomplished lady... But the singing! Oh, it was hard to hear much but the many young lesser ranking listeners could not utter a sound. Did Knyaginya Golitsyna catch a cold, or is this her Achilles heel?
The audience could not but notice the silent, subtle yet simultaneously clear exchanges between young Graf Razumovsky and HIH Tzarevna Natalya. Could it be? A simple flirtation... Or a blooming affair?!
More in "Grand Duchess is Expecting" plotline: docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_YiErkELGBmeIPXbRwcxHNaZl...
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British postcard by Photo-Roff in the Black & White Gallery, London, no. 1180. Photo: David Steen, 1980.
American film and television actor Lee Marvin (1924-1987) began as a supporting player of a generally vicious demeanor, then metamorphosed into a star playing tough, hard-bitten anti-heroes. Known for his gravelly smoke burnished voice and premature white hair, Marvin initially played villains, soldiers, and other hardboiled characters. A prominent television role was that of Detective Lieutenant Frank Ballinger in the NBC crime series M Squad (1957–1960). He became a major star with Cat Ballou (1965), a comedy Western in which he played dual roles, but his career waned considerably after Paint Your Wagon (1969). For portraying both gunfighter Kid Shelleen and criminal Tim Strawn, he won the Oscar for Best Actor, along with a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, an NBR Award, and the Silver Bear for Best Actor. Marvin is also remembered for his 'tough guy' characters in The Killers (1964), The Professionals (1966), The Dirty Dozen (1967), Point Blank (1967), and The Big Red One (1980).
Lamont Waltman Marvin Jr. was born in 1924 in New York City. He was the son of Lamont Waltman Marvin, an advertising executive and later the head of the New York and New England Apple Institute, and Courtenay Washington (née Davidge), a fashion and beauty writer/editor. As with his elder brother, Robert, he was named in honor of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who was his first cousin, four times removed. His father was a direct descendant of Matthew Marvin Sr., who emigrated from Great Bentley, Essex, England, in 1635, and helped found Hartford, Connecticut. Marvin studied the violin when he was young. As a teenager, Marvin "spent weekends and spare time hunting deer, puma, wild turkey, and bobwhite in the wilds of the then-uncharted Everglades". He attended Manumit School, a Christian socialist boarding school in Pawling, New York, during the late 1930s, and later attended St. Leo College Preparatory School, a Catholic school in St. Leo, Florida, after being expelled from several other schools for bad behaviour. Marvin left school at 18 to enlist in the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 1942. He served with the 4th Marine Division in the Pacific Theater during World War II. While serving as a member of "I" Company, 3rd Battalion, 24th Marines, 4th Marine Division, he was wounded in action on in 1944, during the assault on Mount Tapochau in the Battle of Saipan, during which most of his company were casualties. He was hit by machine-gun fire, which severed his sciatic nerve, and then was hit again in the foot by a sniper. After over a year of medical treatment in naval hospitals, Marvin was given a medical discharge with the rank of private first class (he had been a corporal years earlier but had been demoted after causing trouble) in 1945 Philadelphia. Marvin's military awards include the Purple Heart Medal, the Presidential Unit Citation, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, and the Combat Action Ribbon.
After the war, while working as a plumber's assistant at a local community theatre in upstate New York, Lee Marvin was asked to replace an actor who had fallen ill during rehearsals. He caught the acting bug and got a job with the company at $7 a week. He moved to Greenwich Village and used the GI Bill to study at the American Theatre Wing. He appeared on stage in a production of 'Uniform of Flesh', an adaptation of the novel 'Billy Budd' (1949). It was done at the Experimental Theatre, where a few months later Marvin also appeared in 'The Nineteenth Hole of Europe' (1949). Marvin began appearing on television shows like Escape, The Big Story, and Treasury Men in Action. He made it to Broadway with a small role in a production of Uniform of Flesh, now called Billy Budd in February 1951. Marvin's film debut was in You're in the Navy Now (Henry Hathaway, 1951), which also marked the debuts of Charles Bronson and Jack Warden. This required some filming in Hollywood. Marvin decided to stay there. He had a similar small part in Teresa (Fred Zinnemann, 1951). As a decorated combat veteran, Marvin was a natural in war dramas, where he frequently assisted the director and other actors in realistically portraying infantry movement, arranging costumes, and the use of firearms. He guest-starred on episodes of Fireside Theatre (1950), Suspense (1950), and Rebound (1952). Hathaway used him again on Diplomatic Courier (Henry Hathaway, 1952) and he could be seen in Down Among the Sheltering Palms (Edmund Goulding, 1952), We're Not Married! (Edmund Goulding, 1952), The Duel at Silver Creek (Don Siegel, 1952), and Hangman's Knot (Roy Huggins, 1952). He guest-starred on Biff Baker, U.S.A. (1952) and Dragnet (1952-1953), and had a decent role in a feature with Eight Iron Men (Edward Dmytryk, 1952), a war film starring Bonar Colleano and produced by Stanley Kramer. Marvin's role had been played on Broadway by Burt Lancaster. He was a sergeant in the Western Seminole (Budd Boetticher, 1953), and was a corporal in The Glory Brigade (Robert D. Webb, 1953), a Korean War film starring Victor Mature. He was now in much demand for Westerns: The Stranger Wore a Gun (Andre DeToth, 1953) with Randolph Scott, and Gun Fury (Raoul Walsh, 1953) with Rock Hudson and Donna Reed.
Lee Marvin received much acclaim for his portrayal as villains in two Film Noirs: The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953) where he played Gloria Grahame's vicious boyfriend, and The Wild One (László Benedek, 1953) opposite Marlon Brando. Marvin's gang in the film was called "The Beetles". He continued in TV shows such as The Plymouth Playhouse (1953) and The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse (1954). He had support roles in the 3D horror mystery B-movie Gorilla at Large (Harmon Jones, 1954) and had a notable small role as smart-aleck sailor Meatball in The Caine Mutiny (Edward Dmytryk, 1954), produced by Stanley Kramer. Marvin was in the war film The Raid (Hugo Fregonese, 1954) with Van Heflin and Anne Bancroft, and in episodes of the TV series Center Stage (1954), Medic (1954) and TV Reader's Digest (1955). He had an excellent part as Hector, the small-town hood in Bad Day at Black Rock (John Sturges, 1955) with Spencer Tracy and Robert Ryan. Also in 1955, he played a conflicted, brutal bank-robber in the thriller Violent Saturday (Richard Fleischer, 1955) with Victor Mature. A latter-day critic wrote of the character, "Marvin brings a multi-faceted complexity to the role and gives a great example of the early promise that launched his long and successful career." Marvin played Robert Mitchum's friend in Not as a Stranger (Stanley Kramer, 1955), a medical drama also produced by Kramer. He had bigger supporting roles in A Life in the Balance (Harry Horner, Rafael Portillo, 1955), Pete Kelly's Blues (Jack Webb, 1955) and I Died a Thousand Times (Stuart Heisler, 1955) with Jack Palance. Marvin was the villain in 7 Men from Now (Budd Boetticher, 1956) with Randolph Scott, and was second-billed to Jack Palance in Attack (Robert Aldrich, 1956). Marvin had good roles in The Rack (Arnold Laven, 1956) with Paul Newman, Raintree County (Edward Dmytryk, 1956) starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, and The Missouri Traveler (Herry Hopper, 1958). Marvin finally got to be a leading man in 100 episodes in the successful television series M Squad (1957-1960). Set in Chicago, Illinois, it starred Marvin as Detective Lieutenant Frank Ballinger, a member of "M Squad", a special unit of the Chicago Police, assisting other units in battling organized crime, corruption, and violent crimes citywide. One critic described the show as "a hyped-up, violent Dragnet ... with a hard-as-nails Marvin" playing a tough police lieutenant. Marvin received the role after guest-starring in a memorable Dragnet episode as a serial killer. When the series ended Marvin appeared on such TV shows as Wagon Train (1960-1961), Route 66 (1961; he was injured during a fight scene), Bonanza (1962), The Untouchables (1961-1962; several times), The Virginian (1962), The Twilight Zone (1961-1963), and The Dick Powell Theatre (1963).
Lee Marvin returned to features with a prominent role in The Comancheros (Michael Curtiz, 1961) starring John Wayne. He played in two more films with Wayne, both directed by John Ford: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and Donovan's Reef (1963). As the vicious Liberty Valance, Marvin played his first title role and held his own with two of the screen's biggest stars (John Wayne and James Stewart). In 1962 Marvin appeared as Martin Kalig on the TV western The Virginian in the episode titled 'It Tolls for Thee'. He continued to guest star on shows like Combat! (1963), Dr. Kildare (1962-1964), and The Great Adventure (1963). For director Don Siegel, Marvin appeared in The Killers (1964) playing an efficient professional assassin alongside Clu Gulager. The Killers was also the first film in which Marvin received top billing. Marvin finally became a star for his comic role in the Western comedy Cat Ballou (Elliot Silverstein, 1965) starring Jane Fonda. This was a surprise hit and Marvin won the 1965 Oscar for Best Actor and several other awards. Playing alongside Vivien Leigh and Simone Signoret, Marvin won the 1966 National Board of Review Award for male actors for his role in Ship of Fools (Stanley Kramer, 1965). Marvin next performed in the hit Western The Professionals (Richard Brooks, 1966), in which he played the leader of a small band of skilled mercenaries (Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, and Woody Strode) rescuing a kidnap victim (Claudia Cardinale) shortly after the Mexican Revolution. He followed that film with the hugely successful World War II epic The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich, 1967) in which top-billed Marvin again portrayed an intrepid commander of a colorful group (future stars John Cassavetes, Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas, Jim Brown, and Donald Sutherland) performing an almost impossible mission. In the wake of these two films and after having received an Oscar, Marvin was a huge star, given enormous control over his next film Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967), co-starring Angie Dickinson. He portrayed a hard-nosed criminal bent on revenge. Marvin, who had selected Boorman himself for the director's slot, had a central role in the film's development, plotline, and staging. Marvin also appeared in another Boorman film, the critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful World War II character study Hell in the Pacific (John Boorman, 1968), also starring famed Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. Marvin was originally cast as Pike Bishop (later played by William Holden) in The Wild Bunch (1969), but fell out with director Sam Peckinpah and pulled out to star in the Western musical Paint Your Wagon (Joshua Logan, 1969), in which he was top-billed over a singing Clint Eastwood. Despite his limited singing ability, he had a surprise hit song with "Wand'rin' Star". By this time, he was getting paid a million dollars per film, $200,000 less than top star Paul Newman was making at the time.
Lee Marvin had a much greater variety of roles in the 1970s, with fewer bad-guy roles than in earlier years. His 1970s films included Monte Walsh (William A. Fraker, 1970), a Western with Jack Palance and Jeanne Moreau; the violent Prime Cut (Michael Ritchie, 1972) with Gene Hackman; Pocket Money (Stuart Rosenberg, 1972) with Paul Newman; Emperor of the North (Robert Aldrich, 1973) opposite Ernest Borgnine; as Hickey in The Iceman Cometh (John Frankenheimer, 1973) with Fredric March and Robert Ryan; The Spikes Gang (Richard Fleischer, 1974) with Noah Beery Jr.; The Klansman (Terence Young, 1974) with Richard Burton; Shout at the Devil (Peter Hunt, 1976), a World War One adventure with Roger Moore; The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday (Don Taylor, 1976), a comic Western with Oliver Reed; and Avalanche Express (Mark Robson, 1978), a Cold War thriller with Robert Shaw who died during production. None of these films were big box office hits. Marvin was offered the role of Quint in Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) but declined, stating "What would I tell my fishing friends who'd see me come off a hero against a dummy shark?". Marvin's last big role was in Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One (1980), a war film based on Fuller's own war experiences. His remaining films were Death Hunt (Peter R. Hunt, 1981), a Canadian action film with Charles Bronson; Gorky Park (Michael Apted, 1983) with William Hurt; and in France Canicule/Dog Day (Yves Boisset, 1984), with Miou-Miou. For TV he did The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1985), a sequel with Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and Richard Jaeckel picking up where they had left off despite being 18 years older. His final appearance was in The Delta Force (Menahem Golan, 1986) with Chuck Norris, playing a role turned down by Charles Bronson. Marvin had married Betty Ebeling in February 1951 and together they had four children, son Christopher Lamont (1952–2013), and three daughters: Courtenay Lee (1954), Cynthia Louise (1956), and Claudia Leslie (1958–2012). Married 16 years, they divorced in 1967. A long-term romantic relationship with Michelle Triola led, after their breakup, to a highly publicized lawsuit in which Triola asked for a substantial portion of Marvin's assets. Her case failed in its main pursuit but did establish a legal precedent for the rights of unmarried cohabitors, the so-called "palimony" law. Marvin reunited with his high school sweetheart, Pamela Feeley and they married in October 1970. She had four children with three previous marriages, they had no children together and remained married until his death in 1987. In December 1986, Marvin was hospitalized for more than two weeks because of a condition related to coccidioidomycosis. He went into respiratory distress and was administered steroids to help his breathing. He had major intestinal ruptures as a result and underwent a colectomy. Marvin died of a heart attack on 29 August 1987 in Tucson, Arizona, aged 63. He was buried with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery.
Sources: Jim Beaver (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Alright, now that I’ve seen Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and that James Gunn confirmed he’s writing Vol. 3 as we speak, I’m ready to tell you guys what I’d like to see in Vol. 3. But before we get started, MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!!!! Again, if you haven’t seen Vol. 2 yet, DON’T READ THIS.
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Now there are a few things we already know about this movie, the first one being that Adam Warlock will in fact be in it, that the movie will take place after Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers 4, so the film will take place at least 4 years after Vol. 2, that there will be a bigger focus on Gamora, and that this movie will end the story of this team of Guardians. So I’m going to keep each of those factors in mind as I write this, so let’s get to it!
Alright, let’s talk about Adam Warlock. I think the film will start out with Adam Warlock as a villain hunting down the Guardians, as we’ve been told in the post-credit scene of Vol. 2, and somehow he’ll end up joining the ranks of the Guardians. I think Adam Warlock would bring a great dynamic into the team if he sort of created a love triangle between him, Gamora, and Star Lord, because Gamora and Adam Warlock do have a history in the comics. Now as for how I want Adam Warlock to be like, I’d like him to kinda be like the dumb hot guy, with that suck up personality that the Sovereign had in Vol. 2.
Now as for a good story to adapt, I think they should adapt the recent Guardians story where they are grounded on earth. I think if there were stranded on earth for maybe the second act of the movie, it’d bring some great humor of the characters interacting with earth culture. It would also bring some emotion because it’d be Peter Quill coming back to earth for the first time since his mother died, which I believe is the next and final step in Star Lord’s character arc.
Now let’s talk about the plot and story. Now I would want Annihilus as the villain for this film, but unfortunately, Fox owns the rights to him so I didn’t choose him as the main villain. I think the appropriate villain for this movie would be the Supreme Intelligence of the Kree. It would be cool to have the Kree as the villains in the last Guardians movie because it’d bring it full circle to the first. The idea of my story is that the Kree and Skrull war is happening after Infinity, which I believe will have some part in Captain Marvel. This plotline could tie into my “grounded” storyline because if I remember correctly, there was a story where the Kree wanted to destroy earth, or at least conquer it, in order in order to create a navigational advantage in their war. This storyline could potentially have Captain Marvel join the Guardians for a bit too.
Now as for how this movie could end, I’m going to be honest, I have no idea how this could end because I don’t want it to end. Maybe it ends with Star Lord settling down on earth, having it come full circle, I don’t know. How about you guys let me know how it should end! Leave your ideas in the comments!
Lastly, let’s talk about the ORIGINAL Guardians of the Galaxy. Now seeing that end credit’s scene in Vol. 2, it’s clear that the original Guardians have a role in the future of these films, so I bet we’ll see a Guardians vs. Guardians at some point in the film and then they’ll team up in the end or something. I don’t know how that fits into my story, but it’ll probably happen.
Well, those are my thoughts on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, but what I’m more interested is what are YOUR thoughts on the last installment of this team we love so much? Leave your ideas down in the comments and let’s discuss! Also, make sure to leave recommendations in the comments of other future movies you’d like me to give my ideas on!
American Mirro-Krome postcard by H.S. Crocker Co. Inc., San Francisco, Calif., no. HSC-305. Lee Marvin in the TV series M Squad (1957). Caption: Lee Marvin plays the role of Lieutenant Ballinger in M Squad, an action-detective series filmed at Revue Studios. In addition to starring in his M Squad series, Lee also appears as a guest star in television specials.
American film and television actor Lee Marvin (1924-1987) began as a supporting player of a generally vicious demeanor, then metamorphosed into a star playing tough, hard-bitten anti-heroes. Known for his gravelly smoke burnished voice and premature white hair, Marvin initially played villains, soldiers, and other hardboiled characters. A prominent television role was that of Detective Lieutenant Frank Ballinger in the NBC crime series M Squad (1957–1960). He became a major star with Cat Ballou (1965), a comedy Western in which he played dual roles, but his career waned considerably after Paint Your Wagon (1969). For portraying both gunfighter Kid Shelleen and criminal Tim Strawn, he won the Oscar for Best Actor, along with a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, an NBR Award, and the Silver Bear for Best Actor. Marvin is also remembered for his 'tough guy' characters in The Killers (1964), The Professionals (1966), The Dirty Dozen (1967), Point Blank (1967), and The Big Red One (1980).
Lamont Waltman Marvin Jr. was born in 1924 in New York City. He was the son of Lamont Waltman Marvin, an advertising executive and later the head of the New York and New England Apple Institute, and Courtenay Washington (née Davidge), a fashion and beauty writer/editor. As with his elder brother, Robert, he was named in honor of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who was his first cousin, four times removed. His father was a direct descendant of Matthew Marvin Sr., who emigrated from Great Bentley, Essex, England, in 1635, and helped found Hartford, Connecticut. Marvin studied the violin when he was young. As a teenager, Marvin "spent weekends and spare time hunting deer, puma, wild turkey, and bobwhite in the wilds of the then-uncharted Everglades". He attended Manumit School, a Christian socialist boarding school in Pawling, New York, during the late 1930s, and later attended St. Leo College Preparatory School, a Catholic school in St. Leo, Florida, after being expelled from several other schools for bad behaviour. Marvin left school at 18 to enlist in the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 1942. He served with the 4th Marine Division in the Pacific Theater during World War II. While serving as a member of "I" Company, 3rd Battalion, 24th Marines, 4th Marine Division, he was wounded in action on in 1944, during the assault on Mount Tapochau in the Battle of Saipan, during which most of his company were casualties. He was hit by machine-gun fire, which severed his sciatic nerve, and then was hit again in the foot by a sniper. After over a year of medical treatment in naval hospitals, Marvin was given a medical discharge with the rank of private first class (he had been a corporal years earlier but had been demoted after causing trouble) in 1945 Philadelphia. Marvin's military awards include the Purple Heart Medal, the Presidential Unit Citation, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, and the Combat Action Ribbon.
After the war, while working as a plumber's assistant at a local community theatre in upstate New York, Lee Marvin was asked to replace an actor who had fallen ill during rehearsals. He caught the acting bug and got a job with the company at $7 a week. He moved to Greenwich Village and used the GI Bill to study at the American Theatre Wing. He appeared on stage in a production of 'Uniform of Flesh', an adaptation of the novel 'Billy Budd' (1949). It was done at the Experimental Theatre, where a few months later Marvin also appeared in 'The Nineteenth Hole of Europe' (1949). Marvin began appearing on television shows like Escape, The Big Story, and Treasury Men in Action. He made it to Broadway with a small role in a production of Uniform of Flesh, now called Billy Budd in February 1951. Marvin's film debut was in You're in the Navy Now (Henry Hathaway, 1951), which also marked the debuts of Charles Bronson and Jack Warden. This required some filming in Hollywood. Marvin decided to stay there. He had a similar small part in Teresa (Fred Zinnemann, 1951). As a decorated combat veteran, Marvin was a natural in war dramas, where he frequently assisted the director and other actors in realistically portraying infantry movement, arranging costumes, and the use of firearms. He guest-starred on episodes of Fireside Theatre (1950), Suspense (1950), and Rebound (1952). Hathaway used him again on Diplomatic Courier (Henry Hathaway, 1952) and he could be seen in Down Among the Sheltering Palms (Edmund Goulding, 1952), We're Not Married! (Edmund Goulding, 1952), The Duel at Silver Creek (Don Siegel, 1952), and Hangman's Knot (Roy Huggins, 1952). He guest-starred on Biff Baker, U.S.A. (1952) and Dragnet (1952-1953), and had a decent role in a feature with Eight Iron Men (Edward Dmytryk, 1952), a war film starring Bonar Colleano and produced by Stanley Kramer. Marvin's role had been played on Broadway by Burt Lancaster. He was a sergeant in the Western Seminole (Budd Boetticher, 1953), and was a corporal in The Glory Brigade (Robert D. Webb, 1953), a Korean War film starring Victor Mature. He was now in much demand for Westerns: The Stranger Wore a Gun (Andre DeToth, 1953) with Randolph Scott, and Gun Fury (Raoul Walsh, 1953) with Rock Hudson and Donna Reed.
Lee Marvin received much acclaim for his portrayal as villains in two Film Noirs: The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953) where he played Gloria Grahame's vicious boyfriend, and The Wild One (László Benedek, 1953) opposite Marlon Brando. Marvin's gang in the film was called "The Beetles". He continued in TV shows such as The Plymouth Playhouse (1953) and The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse (1954). He had support roles in the 3D horror mystery B-movie Gorilla at Large (Harmon Jones, 1954) and had a notable small role as smart-aleck sailor Meatball in The Caine Mutiny (Edward Dmytryk, 1954), produced by Stanley Kramer. Marvin was in the war film The Raid (Hugo Fregonese, 1954) with Van Heflin and Anne Bancroft, and in episodes of the TV series Center Stage (1954), Medic (1954) and TV Reader's Digest (1955). He had an excellent part as Hector, the small-town hood in Bad Day at Black Rock (John Sturges, 1955) with Spencer Tracy and Robert Ryan. Also in 1955, he played a conflicted, brutal bank-robber in the thriller Violent Saturday (Richard Fleischer, 1955) with Victor Mature. A latter-day critic wrote of the character, "Marvin brings a multi-faceted complexity to the role and gives a great example of the early promise that launched his long and successful career." Marvin played Robert Mitchum's friend in Not as a Stranger (Stanley Kramer, 1955), a medical drama also produced by Kramer. He had bigger supporting roles in A Life in the Balance (Harry Horner, Rafael Portillo, 1955), Pete Kelly's Blues (Jack Webb, 1955) and I Died a Thousand Times (Stuart Heisler, 1955) with Jack Palance. Marvin was the villain in 7 Men from Now (Budd Boetticher, 1956) with Randolph Scott, and was second-billed to Jack Palance in Attack (Robert Aldrich, 1956). Marvin had good roles in The Rack (Arnold Laven, 1956) with Paul Newman, Raintree County (Edward Dmytryk, 1956) starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, and The Missouri Traveler (Herry Hopper, 1958). Marvin finally got to be a leading man in 100 episodes in the successful television series M Squad (1957-1960). Set in Chicago, Illinois, it starred Marvin as Detective Lieutenant Frank Ballinger, a member of "M Squad", a special unit of the Chicago Police, assisting other units in battling organized crime, corruption and violent crimes citywide. One critic described the show as "a hyped-up, violent Dragnet ... with a hard-as-nails Marvin" playing a tough police lieutenant. Marvin received the role after guest-starring in a memorable Dragnet episode as a serial killer. When the series ended Marvin appeared on such TV shows as Wagon Train (1960-1961), Route 66 (1961; he was injured during a fight scene), Bonanza (1962), The Untouchables (1961-1962; several times), The Virginian (1962), The Twilight Zone (1961-1963), and The Dick Powell Theatre (1963).
Lee Marvin returned to features with a prominent role in The Comancheros (Michael Curtiz, 1961) starring John Wayne. He played in two more films with Wayne, both directed by John Ford: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and Donovan's Reef (1963). As the vicious Liberty Valance, Marvin played his first title role and held his own with two of the screen's biggest stars (John Wayne and James Stewart). In 1962 Marvin appeared as Martin Kalig on the TV western The Virginian in the episode titled 'It Tolls for Thee'. He continued to guest star on shows like Combat! (1963), Dr. Kildare (1962-1964) and The Great Adventure (1963). For director Don Siegel, Marvin appeared in The Killers (1964) playing an efficient professional assassin alongside Clu Gulager. The Killers was also the first film in which Marvin received top billing. Marvin finally became a star for his comic role in the Western comedy Cat Ballou (Elliot Silverstein, 1965) starring Jane Fonda. This was a surprise hit and Marvin won the 1965 Oscar for Best Actor and several other awards. Playing alongside Vivien Leigh and Simone Signoret, Marvin won the 1966 National Board of Review Award for male actors for his role in Ship of Fools (Stanley Kramer, 1965). Marvin next performed in the hit Western The Professionals (Richard Brooks, 1966), in which he played the leader of a small band of skilled mercenaries (Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, and Woody Strode) rescuing a kidnap victim (Claudia Cardinale) shortly after the Mexican Revolution. He followed that film with the hugely successful World War II epic The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich, 1967) in which top-billed Marvin again portrayed an intrepid commander of a colorful group (future stars John Cassavetes, Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas, Jim Brown, and Donald Sutherland) performing an almost impossible mission. In the wake of these two films and after having received an Oscar, Marvin was a huge star, given enormous control over his next film Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967), co-starring Angie Dickinson. He portrayed a hard-nosed criminal bent on revenge. Marvin, who had selected Boorman himself for the director's slot, had a central role in the film's development, plotline, and staging. Marvin also appeared in another Boorman film, the critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful World War II character study Hell in the Pacific (John Boorman, 1968), also starring famed Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. Marvin was originally cast as Pike Bishop (later played by William Holden) in The Wild Bunch (1969), but fell out with director Sam Peckinpah and pulled out to star in the Western musical Paint Your Wagon (Joshua Logan, 1969), in which he was top-billed over a singing Clint Eastwood. Despite his limited singing ability, he had a surprise hit song with "Wand'rin' Star". By this time, he was getting paid a million dollars per film, $200,000 less than top star Paul Newman was making at the time.
Lee Marvin had a much greater variety of roles in the 1970s, with fewer 'bad-guy' roles than in earlier years. His 1970s films included Monte Walsh (William A. Fraker, 1970), a Western with Jack Palance and Jeanne Moreau; the violent Prime Cut (Michael Ritchie, 1972) with Gene Hackman; Pocket Money (Stuart Rosenberg, 1972) with Paul Newman; Emperor of the North (Robert Aldrich, 1973) opposite Ernest Borgnine; as Hickey in The Iceman Cometh (John Frankenheimer, 1973) with Fredric March and Robert Ryan; The Spikes Gang (Richard Fleischer, 1974) with Noah Beery Jr.; The Klansman (Terence Young, 1974) with Richard Burton; Shout at the Devil (Peter Hunt, 1976), a World War One adventure with Roger Moore; The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday (Don Taylor, 1976), a comic Western with Oliver Reed; and Avalanche Express (Mark Robson, 1978), a Cold War thriller with Robert Shaw who died during production. None of these films were big box office hits. Marvin was offered the role of Quint in Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) but declined, stating "What would I tell my fishing friends who'd see me come off a hero against a dummy shark?". Marvin's last big role was in Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One (1980), a war film based on Fuller's own war experiences. His remaining films were Death Hunt (Peter R. Hunt, 1981), a Canadian action film with Charles Bronson; Gorky Park (Michael Apted, 1983) with William Hurt; and in France Canicule/Dog Day (Yves Boisset, 1984), with Miou-Miou. For TV he did The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1985), a sequel with Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and Richard Jaeckel picking up where they had left off despite being 18 years older. His final appearance was in The Delta Force (Menahem Golan, 1986) with Chuck Norris, playing a role turned down by Charles Bronson. Marvin had married Betty Ebeling in February 1951 and together they had four children, son Christopher Lamont (1952–2013), and three daughters: Courtenay Lee (1954), Cynthia Louise (1956), and Claudia Leslie (1958–2012). Married 16 years, they divorced in 1967. A long-term romantic relationship with Michelle Triola led, after their breakup, to a highly publicized lawsuit in which Triola asked for a substantial portion of Marvin's assets. Her case failed in its main pursuit but did establish a legal precedent for the rights of unmarried cohabitors, the so-called "palimony" law. Marvin reunited with his high school sweetheart, Pamela Feeley and they married in October 1970. She had four children with three previous marriages, they had no children together and remained married until his death in 1987. In December 1986, Marvin was hospitalized for more than two weeks because of a condition related to coccidioidomycosis. He went into respiratory distress and was administered steroids to help his breathing. He had major intestinal ruptures as a result and underwent a colectomy. Marvin died of a heart attack on 29 August 1987 in Tucson, Arizona, aged 63. He was buried with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery.
Sources: Jim Beaver (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our albums Dutch TV History and Vintage TV Heroes, and our blog European Film Star Postcards.
(1) Abiding Easter traditions, the Easter Feast had to take place, regardless of late Tzarevna's recent death. The conversation was forced by all parties involved, although the Empress tried to lighten the conversation with a fitting toast "for the new beginnings", which didn't sit well with her grieving son.
Read what happened next in
"Tzarevna is Expecting" plotline: docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_YiErkELGBmeIPXbRwcxHNaZl...
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As you may know, King Clown recently held a contest, wherein the runner up got to comission an issue that he would write. Naturally, I asked that he focus on Black Manta, due to his outstanding work on the character in the Aquaman DCU series. The following issue serves as a prelude to Killer Moth: Sandstorm, a five part arc serving as the conclusion to the Injustice League, Society and Ra's Al Ghul plotlines.
Without further ado, let's get to it-
~
Sand kicked off the ground as Black Manta leapt into the air. His wrist mounted blade drove into the head of a talon, taking it down to the floor. The zombie-like ninja surrounded him, more than five at the least.
If it would get him here, he didn't mind it.
-~-~-
"There is no reason for him to be here!"
Standing, at the edge of the table, was Orm Marius, better known as the Ocean Master. Across from him, sat with his hands folded together was Bane, the leader of the new Society.
Bane tilted his head to the side, his eyes questioning the prince, although hidden beneath his mask. "I don't see the issue, Prince Orm."
Orm's eyes flashed red for a split second, his hand raising to point at the seated man. "It's King… King Orm and you know it."
Bane lowers his hands to the table, pushing himself to a stand. "Your titles don't concern me," he began, "King, Prince, Ocean Master… they mean nothing." Bane, now at a stand, took a few steps towards Orm. "What does, is your reservation of his recruitment."
"I know him, more than anyone else here does…" Orm stopped, thinking for a moment. "But even then, no one knows what's going through that animal's mind."
Bane let off a small hum of recognition. "I see, I see," His head turned down to the file of Black Manta, which sat on the table. "You believe he is too reckless… self involved?"
Orm nodded his head. "Exactly that. You saw what happened with Luthor." The thought of betrayal made Orm's blood boil. The feeling of his own people… rallying behind the half-breed. It made him want Aquaman out of the picture even more than before. "He aligns with no one, no one but himself."
Bane produced a small noise of acknowledgement as he shut the file. "I understand your concerns."
"Thank you, it would be a fo-"
"But," Bane interrupted, "you are missing a key detail." Orm tilted his head, confused with the statement. "You said it yourself, he is nothing more than an animal," Bane then turned to the second file he had set out, a picture of Arthur Curry inside. "And an animal... just needs the right bait."
-~-~-
Blood splattered against the wall of the ship. The pirate's face slowly lost color as he slid off of the silver sword held by Black Manta. Bodies littered the outer deck, some slipping into the pool. Manta flung his sword to the side, the excessive blood slapping against the wood flooring of the yacht.
The owner had it. An old relic his father had found on a dive. It was sold upon his death.
He was going to get it back.
He entered the inside of the boat, kicking down the locked door like it was made of cardboard. Bullets rained from the guards inside, the men unloading their magazines on Manta. The bullets bounced off of his suit, ricocheting off of the walls. Raising his arms to an 'x' shale and letting them fall, he let out a blast of his plasma rays from his helmet. The blast took care of the armed guards quite easily, clearing open his path.
He continued through the yacht halls, gutting anyone that stood in his way. As he made it to the bar, he heard a noise inside. Investigating, a man holding a 12 gauge raised from behind the counter. Manta raised his sword, but it was too late.
"Die freak!" Shouted the man as he pulled the trigger.
The buckshot hit him square in the chest, recoiling him back through a wall. As he brought himself to a stand, the rubble filling from his suit, he heard the sound of the shotgun pump. His head tilted up to see the barrel of the weapon shoved into his face. The man aimed, ready to fire once more, before a large tentacle erupted from outside the bar window of the yacht.
The man screeched as the tentacle impaled him, dragging him out through the window, into the ocean. Manta tilted his head slightly as he watched the whole back wall of the bar be torn out.
A small scoff exited his mouth as he witnessed the two men. Ocean Master and Bane stood atop an Octopus, the top of it's head level with the floor.
Bane quickly stepped off, Orm following after. "Black Manta, it is good to see you." Bane reached out his hand to shake Manta's own.
He only watched the two new arrivals. "Bane… Prince." He took note of Orm's flash of anger at the use of the title Prince. "What do you want?"
"Hmm, never one for conversation, were you?" The silence brought discomfort on Orm's part, his trident ready to cast a spell if the man were to try anything. "We," he began, pointing to Orm and himself, "would like your assistance."
Manta quickly turned, his body already moving back through the ship. Orm scoffed at the display. "Show some respect, cretin. Did your father not teach you manners?"
Manta's head swiveled, the red of his eyes beginning to smoke. Bane quickly stepped in. "Both of you, act like adults. Manta, I understand your… hesitance. You are an open player, sitting in the grey area of all of this."
"I plan to keep it like that," spoke Manta, as he turned his whole body to face the large South American man. "Getting involved will result in wasted time and energy."
"Wasted time… what else are you to do?" Asked Orm, a smirk on his face. "You are nothing but a pirate. Worthless."
"Bane, tell your lapdog to stand down. Or, you his pawn? We know for certain you aren't the King." Manta watched as Orm's smirk turned sour.
Orm launched forward, Manta extending the blade on his wrist. Bane swiftly moved, grabbing both Manta's arm and Orm's trident. "That is enough. If I knew you would cause problems, I would not have brought you, Orm."
Bane stood, staring both of them down. Manta quickly ripped his arm away, retracting the blade. "I won't be your pawn. Not like him, or any of your other society freaks."
As he turned to leave, Bane spoke up. "What if… I had a way to get you Aquaman?"
Manta felt a rage boiling in the stomach as he turned around. "Like Luthor did?" He began moving towards Bane. Long, slow steps. "You gonna send me on a goose chase? Have me act as your errand boy?" He was now standing directly in front of Bane, his silver helmet tilted upwards. "I'm nobody's dog. Not yours, not Luthor's… not anyone."
As he turned to walk away, a firm hand placed itself on his shoulder. Manta swung his free hand towards Bane, but it was caught mid-punch.
"What if the plan hinged on Aquaman and the Justice League arriving? You bring them out, you can have him." Bane's hands held onto Manta, keeping him in place.
David shrugged the hand off his shoulder as Bane released his grip on his fist. Manta squinted his eyes under his helmet, weighing the choice. His head tilted to the side slightly, the red eye barely visible. "I'm listening."
-~-~-
The bodies lay out on the desert sand. The greyish ooze-like blood leaked into the grains. Lined up were the Talons, all of them crucified with their own blades.
Behind the horror, walked Black Manta. His sword was slid into the scabbard on his back, his eyes still smoking red.
"I'll be waiting for you, murderer."
One of the oldest drinking houses in Penzance, The Admiral Benbow has been in existence since the 17th Century. Legend has it that Robert Louis Stevenson visited Penzance in 1880 after returning from a journey to America. Could it have been here that he formulated the idea of the plotline for his book "Treasure Island",but had yet to settle on the starting point for the story.
Back in the 18th century The Admiral Benbow was just one of the local pubs that were involved in the wholesale smuggling of spirits from France. It even had its own in-house smuggling ring, known as the Benbow Brandy Men.
Click the picture twice to zoom in on that figure on the roof. Is he one of the smugglers or one of the customs men
(2) After completing the lithurgy for the Easter Vigil, the Archbishop gave blessings to each attendant. The Empress was first to do so followed by her subjects, who hoped to progress their own agendas.
People could not ignore the agitation and cold looks the Empress gave to her Vitze-Kantzler Knyaz Golitsyn throughout the night. Before being able to find out why, the Empress promptly left, possibly to check on her grieving son. Does it mean he’s falling from grace?
Trying to pretend that everything is fine, Knyaz Golitsyn consulted with his cousin and the Empress’ confidante Knyaginya Natalya Golitsyna. Yet both were clueless as to why, leaving promptly to scheme their next move.
Read what happened next in
"Tzarevna is Expecting" plotline: docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_YiErkELGBmeIPXbRwcxHNaZl...
"Sheremetev in Love" plotline: docs.google.com/presentation/d/1S1L8JesWESwnS1_1ehXmTyc3k...
"Royal Treatment" plotline: docs.google.com/presentation/d/11w07wRtM64aT-slNCqxzs_0p8...
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The four-part mega crossover between the four DC shows on the CW went down this week, and I know I never review TV unless it’s the season as a whole or the series premiere/pilot, but I just had to review this event, it’s too big not to! So for this instance, I’ll tackle each episode separately with the good and the bad and then give each of them a score and then I’ll do an overall score at the end! And because I have to review 4 episodes in one, each section’s going to be a little short. So let’s check it out!
Supergirl:
Good: Alright so this is the only one of the four shows that I don’t watch, but I wasn’t really that confused because I’ve been reading up with what’s going down on the show. That being said, I enjoyed Supergirl herself as always, she’s great. I also enjoyed Alex’s journey of telling everyone that she’s gay. It felt real, it didn’t feel like something the CW would do. I also enjoyed Mon-El, I got a few chuckles out of him. I also found what was going on with Martian Manhunter in this episode with his blood transfusion, but seriously, he deserves better than this show.
Bad: Wow, this was a fucking trick, the CW straight up ticked me. “Four Part Crossover” HELL NO. This episode had nothing to do with the crossover, and all the crossover footage that was in this episode was in the fucking Flash episode!!! That way they had to trick me into watching this shit ass episode about a fucking missile or something and Lena Luthor and shit? Come on, CW, at least trick me into a good episode of Supergirl. Plus Cyborg Superman? Why does he call himself Cyborg Superman? What the fuck is anything?!
I’m going to give this episode of Supergirl a 2/10, it had a lot of flaws, but I’m purely giving it such a low rating because it lied to me.
The Flash:
Good: Now THIS is where we get into it! I loved seeing all these heroes together! Seeing all of them together gave me the same goosebumps when I saw the Avengers together! I also loved the drama between all of them! Flashpoint finally has a huge affect on this show and I loved seeing everyone get mad at Barry for the changes he’s made, but what was even better was Oliver standing up together. That talk they had in Eobard Thawne’s room was incredible and some of Stephen Amell’s best acting! I also liked the Dominators in this episode, they looked scary and I loved that they turned everyone against Oliver and Barry, that fight was epic. We also finally get to see Wally West get some action, but then shortly gets wrecked by Supergirl, but it’s great to finally gets some developments in his character.
Bad: Cisco was annoying and bitchy this episode. He has a good reason for it, but it started getting annoying. That’s it, this episode was perfect.
I’m going to give this episode of Flash a 10/10. This was one of the best episodes of TV I’ve ever seen!
Arrow:
Good: Because it was the 100th episode, they did a shitload of callbacks to season 1 and 2 and holy shit it gave me the feels!! Season 1 and 2 of Arrow is some of my favorite TV season ever and it was so emotional seeing the mansion, Oliver’s parents, Laurel and Sara together, and everything! So while the Arrow 100th episode is going on we get to see Flash and Supergirl help out the new recruits! I haven’t been able to mention this yet, but unlike some people, I like he recruits! I really like Mr. Terrific and Ragman, Wild Dog in on and off for me, but I thought he was fine this episode, I’ll talk more on him later. It was cool to see Barry and Kara do some sweet combos on that villain.
Bad: So going back on Wild Dog, I found it odd how he hated metas and aliens at first and then it felt like he immediately changed his mind. Also who was that villain they were fighting? She just came out of nowhere. Also it was disappointing that we never got to see the actor who played Deathstroke in this episode, we didn’t get that much Deathstroke action.
I’m going to give this episode a 9/10, this episode really made me realised how much I miss season 1 and 2 of Arrow, it’s what got me into this great universe! The stuff with Barry and the others were fine and had nothing to do with the Dominators, but this was a really special episode of Arrow and it really made me want to watch season 1 and 2 again!
Legends of Tomorrow:
Good: First off, I gotta say, most people don’t like Citizen Steel in this show, but I’m a fan! I liked his costume in this episode! His costume is already ridiculous in the comics, and I think they did the best they could with what they had. Anyways let’s get to the meat of this episode, the actual heroes vs aliens! This fight was so badass! I also liked the plotline where some of the heroes travelled back to the 50’s, mostly because I liked Cisco’s journey in this episode, he finally stopped being a bitch and realized how easy it is to fuck up time! The dilemma with Martin Stein was also interesting with how he had to interact with his daughter that he created by messing with time! I remember the first time in the Flash when we traveled through time and I was like, “they can do that?!” And now look where we are, it’s all about time travel!!
Bad: I found it odd that Oliver told Supergirl to hold back in the fight, that just screamed “WE HAVE A BUDGET!” Come on, CW, this is the crossover! Throw all the money you can at this! My only other complaint is I really wanted the first against the dominators to be like Civil War-levels of hype! I was excited and it was cool to watch, but I wanted to have my mouth open the entire time in awe just like I did with that airport fight
I’m going to give this episode a 9/10: a great wrap-up to an amazing crossover!
Overall, this was an incredible THREE PART crossover! THREE PART… Anyways, this was some TV magic and a great reward for a fan like me who has been with this universe for some time! I hope they do something like this every year, I feel like they have to! For these reasons, I’m going to give this crossover a 9/10. I would’ve given this an overall 10/10 if Supergirl’s episode didn’t trick me! Anyways, what did you guys think of this crossover? Leave your thoughts in the comments below and let’s discuss!
(1)The award ceremony for our newest patron Knyazhna Varvara N. Golitsyna’s courage against her uncle’s alleged crimes certainly attracted a few jealous eyes from other young ladies, but also shone in many bachelors' eyes! Everyone was surprised by the Empress' decision to also take her as a Freylina (Maid of Honour).
Learn more about our "Royal Treatment" plotline (#13): docs.google.com/presentation/d/11w07wRtM64aT-slNCqxzs_0p8...
Learn more about our "Sheremetev in Love" plotline (#13): docs.google.com/presentation/d/1S1L8JesWESwnS1_1ehXmTyc3k...
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English postcard by Star-Graphics, no. S 140. Photo: Sylvester Stallone as Rocky.
Sylvester Stallone (1946) is an athletically built, dark-haired American actor/screenwriter/director. Film fans worldwide have been flocking to see Stallone's films for over 30 years, making "Sly" one of Hollywood's biggest-ever box office draws.
Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone was born in 1946, in New York's gritty Hell's Kitchen. His parents were Jackie Stallone (née Labofish), an astrologer, and Frank Stallone, an Italian immigrant who worked as a beautician, and hairdresser. After his parents divorced, he moved with his mother and her new husband, a pizza manufacturer, Anthony 'Tony' Filiti, to Philadelphia. His siblings are actor Frank Stallone, half-sister Toni D'Alto, and Dante Stallone. The young Stallone attended the American College of Switzerland and the University of Miami, eventually obtaining a B.A. degree. He was 23 years old when he got his first starring role in the softcore sex film The Party at Kitty and Stud's (Morton M. Lewis, 1970) in which he played the role of Stud 'The Italian Stallion'. He was paid $200 to play the sex-craved gigolo and appeared nude. In 1976, the film was re-released as The Italian Stallion after Sly's success with Rocky (John G. Avildsen, 1976). In between, he first struggled in small parts in films such as the thriller Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971) starring Jane Fonda, and the comedy Bananas (Woody Allen, 1971). He got a crucial career break alongside fellow young actors Henry Winkler and Perry King, sharing lead billing in the effectively written teen gang film The Lords of Flatbush (Martin Davidson, Stephen Verona, 1974). He also wrote the screenplay for the modestly successful film. Further film and television roles followed, most of them in uninspiring productions except for the opportunity to play a megalomaniac, bloodthirsty race driver named "Machine Gun Joe Viterbo" opposite David Carradine in the Roger Corman-produced Death Race 2000 (Paul Bartel, 1975). However, Stallone was also keen to be recognised as a screenwriter, not just an actor, and, inspired by the 1975 Muhammad Ali-Chuck Wepner fight in Cleveland, Stallone wrote a film script about a nobody fighter given the "million to one opportunity" to challenge for the heavyweight title. Rocky (John G. Avildsen, 1976) became the stuff of cinematic legends, scoring ten Academy Award nominations, winning the Best Picture Award of 1976, and triggering one of the most financially successful film series in history. Whilst full credit is wholly deserved by Stallone, he was duly supported by tremendous acting from fellow cast members Talia Shire, Burgess Meredith, and Burt Young, and director John G. Avildsen gave the film an emotive, earthy appeal from start to finish. Stallone had truly arrived on his terms and offers poured in from various studios eager to secure Hollywood's hottest new star.
Sylvester Stallone followed Rocky (John G. Avildsen, 1976) with F.I.S.T (Norman Jewison, 1978), loosely based on the life of Teamsters boss "Jimmy Hoffa", and Paradise Alley (Sylvester Stallone, 1978) before pulling on the boxing gloves again to resurrect Rocky Balboa in the sequel Rocky II (Sylvester Stallone, 1979). The second outing for the "Italian Stallion" wasn't as powerful or successful as the first "Rocky", however, it still produced a strong box office. Subsequent films Nighthawks (Bruce Malmuth, 1981) with Rutger Hauer, and Escape to Victory (John Huston, 1981) with Michael Caine and Pelé failed to ignite with audiences, so Stallone was once again lured back to familiar territory with Rocky III (Sylvester Stallone, 1982) and a fearsome opponent in "Clubber Lang" played by muscular ex-bodyguard, Mr. T. The third "Rocky" installment far outperformed the first sequel in box office takings, but Stallone retired his prizefighter for a couple of years as another series was about to commence for the busy actor. The character of Green Beret "John Rambo" was the creation of Canadian-born writer David Morrell, and his novel was adapted to the screen with Stallone in the lead role in First Blood (Ted Kotcheff, 1982), also starring Richard Crenna and Brian Dennehy. The film was a surprise hit that polarised audiences because of its commentary about the Vietnam war, which was still relatively fresh in the American public's psyche. Political viewpoints aside, the film was a worldwide smash, and a sequel soon followed with Rambo: First Blood Part II (George P. Cosmatos, 1985), which drew even stronger criticism from several quarters owing to the film's plotline about American MIAs allegedly being held in Vietnam. But they say there is no such thing as bad publicity, and "John Rambo's" second adventure was a major money-spinner for Stallone and cemented him as one of the top male stars of the 1980s. In between, he did his own singing in Did all of his own singing in Rhinestone (Bob Clark, 1984) with Dolly Parton. Riding a wave of amazing popularity, Stallone called on old sparring partner Rocky Balboa to climb back into the ring to defend American pride against a Soviet threat in the form of a towering Russian boxer named "Ivan Drago" played by curt Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV (Sylvester Stallone, 1985). The fourth outing was somewhat controversial with "Rocky" fans, as violence levels seemed excessive compared to previous "Rocky" films, especially with the savage beating suffered by Apollo Creed, played by Carl Weathers, at the hands of the unstoppable "Siberian Express".
Sylvester Stallone continued forward with a slew of macho character-themed films that met with a mixed reception from his fans. Cobra (George P. Cosmatos, 1986) with his wife Brigitte Nielsen was a clumsy mess, Over the Top (Menahem Golan, 1987) was equally mediocre, Rambo III (Peter MacDonald, 1988) saw Rambo take on the Russians in Afghanistan, and cop buddy film Tango & Cash (Andrey Konchalovskiy, 1989) just did not quite hit the mark, although it did feature a top-notch cast and there was chemistry between Stallone and co-star Kurt Russell. Philadelphia's favourite mythical boxer moved out of the shadows for his fifth screen outing in Rocky V (John G. Avildsen, 1990) tackling Tommy "Machine" Gunn played by real-life heavyweight fighter Tommy Morrison, the great-nephew of screen legend John Wayne. Sly quickly followed with the lukewarm comedy Oscar (John Landis, 1991) with Ornella Muti, the painfully unfunny Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (Roger Spottiswoode, 1992) with "Golden Girl" Estelle Getty, the futuristic action film Demolition Man (Marco Brambilla, 1993) with Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock, and the comic book-inspired Judge Dredd (Danny Cannon, 1995). Interestingly, Stallone then took a departure from the gung-ho steely characters he had been portraying to stack on a few extra pounds and tackle a more dramatically challenging role in the intriguing Cop Land (James Mangold, 1997), also starring Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, and Ray Liotta. It isn't a classic of the genre, but Cop Land (1997) certainly surprised many critics with Stallone's understated performance. He has been nominated a record 30 times for the Golden Raspberry Awards, usually in the "Worst Actor" category, and has won 10 times. The Golden Raspberry Award Foundation awarded him a special "Worst Actor of the Century" award in 2000.
Sylvester Stallone lent his voice to the animated adventure story Antz (Eric Darnell, Tim Johnson, 1998), reprised the role made famous by Michael Caine in a terrible remake of Get Carter (Stephen Kay, 2000), climbed back into a race car for Driven (Renny Harlin, 2001), and guest-starred as the "Toymaker" in the third chapter of the popular "Spy Kids" film series, Spy Kids 3: Game Over (Robert Rodriguez, 2003). in 2005 he published his book 'Sly Moves: My Proven Program to Lose Weight, Build Strength, Gain Will Power, and Live Your Dream'. Showing that age had not wearied his two most popular series, Sylvester Stallone brought back never-say-die boxer Rocky Balboa to star in Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone, 2006), and Vietnam veteran Rambo reappeared after a 20-year hiatus to once again right wrongs in the jungles of Thailand in Rambo (Sylvester Stallone, 2008). Another success was The Expendables (Sylvester Stallone, 2010), abound a band of highly skilled mercenaries played by Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and other 'dinosaurs' from the 1980's action film teamed up with each other. The action film opened at number one at the U.S. box office with a first weekend gross of $35 million. This makes Sylvester Stallone the only person in Hollywood history to have starred in films that have opened atop the box office charts over five consecutive decades. Soon followed the less successful sequels The Expendables 2 (Simon West, 2012) and The Expendables 3 (Patrick Hughes, 2014). In between, he also appeared with Schwarzenegger in Escape Plan (Mikael Håfström, 2013). Stallone got rave reviews, his first Golden Globe, and an Oscar nomination for his role in the sports film Creed (Ryan Coogler, 2015) opposite Michael B. Jordan. Once again he played Rocky Balboa who serves as a trainer and mentor to Adonis Johnson, the son of his late friend and former rival Apollo Creed. In 2017, Stallone appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (James Gunn, 2017) as Stakar Ogord / Starhawk, the leader of a Ravagers faction. Then followed Creed II (Steven Caple Jr., 2018) and Rambo: Last Blood (Adrian Grunberg, 2019). The latter film grossed $91 million worldwide against a production budget of $50 million. Sylvester Stallone married three times. His first wife was Sasha Czack (1974-1985) with whom he has two children: Sage and Seargeoh Stallone. Sage acted with Sylvester in Rocky V (1990) and Daylight (1996) and was found dead in 2012 in Los Angeles. From 1985 till 1987, Sly was married to Danish actress Brigitte Nielsen. Since 1997, he is married to Jennifer Flavin, with whom he has three children: Sophia Rose, Sistine Rose, and Scarlet Rose Stallone. Firehouse at IMDb: "Love him or loathe him, Sylvester Stallone has built an enviable and highly respected career in Hollywood, plus, he has considerably influenced modern popular culture through several of his iconic film characters."
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
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A clay pigeon shooting session was organized for Tzarevich Pavel, yet the invitation was declined twice. He is irritated and laments the sheer disrespect for his deceased wife.
Suffering from an emotional strain and embarrassment in front of the court, the Empress alleges that Natalya was having an affair...
Read what happened next in "Tzarevna is Expecting" plotline (#33): docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_YiErkELGBmeIPXbRwcxHNaZl...
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American Arcade card.
American film and television actor Lee Marvin (1924-1987) began as a supporting player of a generally vicious demeanor, then metamorphosed into a star playing tough, hard-bitten anti-heroes. Known for his gravelly smoke burnished voice and premature white hair, Marvin initially played villains, soldiers, and other hardboiled characters. A prominent television role was that of Detective Lieutenant Frank Ballinger in the NBC crime series M Squad (1957–1960). He became a major star with Cat Ballou (1965), a comedy Western in which he played dual roles, but his career waned considerably after Paint Your Wagon (1969). For portraying both gunfighter Kid Shelleen and criminal Tim Strawn, he won the Oscar for Best Actor, along with a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, an NBR Award, and the Silver Bear for Best Actor. Marvin is also remembered for his 'tough guy' characters in The Killers (1964), The Professionals (1966), The Dirty Dozen (1967), Point Blank (1967), and The Big Red One (1980).
Lamont Waltman Marvin Jr. was born in 1924 in New York City. He was the son of Lamont Waltman Marvin, an advertising executive and later the head of the New York and New England Apple Institute, and Courtenay Washington (née Davidge), a fashion and beauty writer/editor. As with his elder brother, Robert, he was named in honor of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who was his first cousin, four times removed. His father was a direct descendant of Matthew Marvin Sr., who emigrated from Great Bentley, Essex, England, in 1635, and helped found Hartford, Connecticut. Marvin studied the violin when he was young. As a teenager, Marvin "spent weekends and spare time hunting deer, puma, wild turkey, and bobwhite in the wilds of the then-uncharted Everglades". He attended Manumit School, a Christian socialist boarding school in Pawling, New York, during the late 1930s, and later attended St. Leo College Preparatory School, a Catholic school in St. Leo, Florida, after being expelled from several other schools for bad behaviour. Marvin left school at 18 to enlist in the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 1942. He served with the 4th Marine Division in the Pacific Theater during World War II. While serving as a member of "I" Company, 3rd Battalion, 24th Marines, 4th Marine Division, he was wounded in action on in 1944, during the assault on Mount Tapochau in the Battle of Saipan, during which most of his company were casualties. He was hit by machine-gun fire, which severed his sciatic nerve, and then was hit again in the foot by a sniper. After over a year of medical treatment in naval hospitals, Marvin was given a medical discharge with the rank of private first class (he had been a corporal years earlier but had been demoted after causing trouble) in 1945 Philadelphia. Marvin's military awards include the Purple Heart Medal, the Presidential Unit Citation, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, and the Combat Action Ribbon.
After the war, while working as a plumber's assistant at a local community theatre in upstate New York, Lee Marvin was asked to replace an actor who had fallen ill during rehearsals. He caught the acting bug and got a job with the company at $7 a week. He moved to Greenwich Village and used the GI Bill to study at the American Theatre Wing. He appeared on stage in a production of 'Uniform of Flesh', an adaptation of the novel 'Billy Budd' (1949). It was done at the Experimental Theatre, where a few months later Marvin also appeared in 'The Nineteenth Hole of Europe' (1949). Marvin began appearing on television shows like Escape, The Big Story, and Treasury Men in Action. He made it to Broadway with a small role in a production of Uniform of Flesh, now called Billy Budd in February 1951. Marvin's film debut was in You're in the Navy Now (Henry Hathaway, 1951), which also marked the debuts of Charles Bronson and Jack Warden. This required some filming in Hollywood. Marvin decided to stay there. He had a similar small part in Teresa (Fred Zinnemann, 1951). As a decorated combat veteran, Marvin was a natural in war dramas, where he frequently assisted the director and other actors in realistically portraying infantry movement, arranging costumes, and the use of firearms. He guest-starred on episodes of Fireside Theatre (1950), Suspense (1950), and Rebound (1952). Hathaway used him again on Diplomatic Courier (Henry Hathaway, 1952) and he could be seen in Down Among the Sheltering Palms (Edmund Goulding, 1952), We're Not Married! (Edmund Goulding, 1952), The Duel at Silver Creek (Don Siegel, 1952), and Hangman's Knot (Roy Huggins, 1952). He guest-starred on Biff Baker, U.S.A. (1952) and Dragnet (1952-1953), and had a decent role in a feature with Eight Iron Men (Edward Dmytryk, 1952), a war film starring Bonar Colleano and produced by Stanley Kramer. Marvin's role had been played on Broadway by Burt Lancaster. He was a sergeant in the Western Seminole (Budd Boetticher, 1953), and was a corporal in The Glory Brigade (Robert D. Webb, 1953), a Korean War film starring Victor Mature. He was now in much demand for Westerns: The Stranger Wore a Gun (Andre DeToth, 1953) with Randolph Scott, and Gun Fury (Raoul Walsh, 1953) with Rock Hudson and Donna Reed.
Lee Marvin received much acclaim for his portrayal as villains in two Film Noirs: The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953) where he played Gloria Grahame's vicious boyfriend, and The Wild One (László Benedek, 1953) opposite Marlon Brando. Marvin's gang in the film was called "The Beetles". He continued in TV shows such as The Plymouth Playhouse (1953) and The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse (1954). He had support roles in the 3D horror mystery B-movie Gorilla at Large (Harmon Jones, 1954) and had a notable small role as smart-aleck sailor Meatball in The Caine Mutiny (Edward Dmytryk, 1954), produced by Stanley Kramer. Marvin was in the war film The Raid (Hugo Fregonese, 1954) with Van Heflin and Anne Bancroft, and in episodes of the TV series Center Stage (1954), Medic (1954) and TV Reader's Digest (1955). He had an excellent part as Hector, the small-town hood in Bad Day at Black Rock (John Sturges, 1955) with Spencer Tracy and Robert Ryan. Also in 1955, he played a conflicted, brutal bank-robber in the thriller Violent Saturday (Richard Fleischer, 1955) with Victor Mature. A latter-day critic wrote of the character, "Marvin brings a multi-faceted complexity to the role and gives a great example of the early promise that launched his long and successful career." Marvin played Robert Mitchum's friend in Not as a Stranger (Stanley Kramer, 1955), a medical drama also produced by Kramer. He had bigger supporting roles in A Life in the Balance (Harry Horner, Rafael Portillo, 1955), Pete Kelly's Blues (Jack Webb, 1955) and I Died a Thousand Times (Stuart Heisler, 1955) with Jack Palance. Marvin was the villain in 7 Men from Now (Budd Boetticher, 1956) with Randolph Scott, and was second-billed to Jack Palance in Attack (Robert Aldrich, 1956). Marvin had good roles in The Rack (Arnold Laven, 1956) with Paul Newman, Raintree County (Edward Dmytryk, 1956) starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, and The Missouri Traveler (Herry Hopper, 1958). Marvin finally got to be a leading man in 100 episodes in the successful television series M Squad (1957-1960). Set in Chicago, Illinois, it starred Marvin as Detective Lieutenant Frank Ballinger, a member of "M Squad", a special unit of the Chicago Police, assisting other units in battling organized crime, corruption, and violent crimes citywide. One critic described the show as "a hyped-up, violent Dragnet ... with a hard-as-nails Marvin" playing a tough police lieutenant. Marvin received the role after guest-starring in a memorable Dragnet episode as a serial killer. When the series ended Marvin appeared on such TV shows as Wagon Train (1960-1961), Route 66 (1961; he was injured during a fight scene), Bonanza (1962), The Untouchables (1961-1962; several times), The Virginian (1962), The Twilight Zone (1961-1963), and The Dick Powell Theatre (1963).
Lee Marvin returned to features with a prominent role in The Comancheros (Michael Curtiz, 1961) starring John Wayne. He played in two more films with Wayne, both directed by John Ford: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and Donovan's Reef (1963). As the vicious Liberty Valance, Marvin played his first title role and held his own with two of the screen's biggest stars (John Wayne and James Stewart). In 1962 Marvin appeared as Martin Kalig on the TV western The Virginian in the episode titled 'It Tolls for Thee'. He continued to guest star on shows like Combat! (1963), Dr. Kildare (1962-1964), and The Great Adventure (1963). For director Don Siegel, Marvin appeared in The Killers (1964) playing an efficient professional assassin alongside Clu Gulager. The Killers was also the first film in which Marvin received top billing. Marvin finally became a star for his comic role in the Western comedy Cat Ballou (Elliot Silverstein, 1965) starring Jane Fonda. This was a surprise hit and Marvin won the 1965 Oscar for Best Actor and several other awards. Playing alongside Vivien Leigh and Simone Signoret, Marvin won the 1966 National Board of Review Award for male actors for his role in Ship of Fools (Stanley Kramer, 1965). Marvin next performed in the hit Western The Professionals (Richard Brooks, 1966), in which he played the leader of a small band of skilled mercenaries (Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, and Woody Strode) rescuing a kidnap victim (Claudia Cardinale) shortly after the Mexican Revolution. He followed that film with the hugely successful World War II epic The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich, 1967) in which top-billed Marvin again portrayed an intrepid commander of a colorful group (future stars John Cassavetes, Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas, Jim Brown, and Donald Sutherland) performing an almost impossible mission. In the wake of these two films and after having received an Oscar, Marvin was a huge star, given enormous control over his next film Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967), co-starring Angie Dickinson. He portrayed a hard-nosed criminal bent on revenge. Marvin, who had selected Boorman himself for the director's slot, had a central role in the film's development, plotline, and staging. Marvin also appeared in another Boorman film, the critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful World War II character study Hell in the Pacific (John Boorman, 1968), also starring famed Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. Marvin was originally cast as Pike Bishop (later played by William Holden) in The Wild Bunch (1969), but fell out with director Sam Peckinpah and pulled out to star in the Western musical Paint Your Wagon (Joshua Logan, 1969), in which he was top-billed over a singing Clint Eastwood. Despite his limited singing ability, he had a surprise hit song with "Wand'rin' Star". By this time, he was getting paid a million dollars per film, $200,000 less than top star Paul Newman was making at the time.
Lee Marvin had a much greater variety of roles in the 1970s, with fewer bad-guy roles than in earlier years. His 1970s films included Monte Walsh (William A. Fraker, 1970), a Western with Jack Palance and Jeanne Moreau; the violent Prime Cut (Michael Ritchie, 1972) with Gene Hackman; Pocket Money (Stuart Rosenberg, 1972) with Paul Newman; Emperor of the North (Robert Aldrich, 1973) opposite Ernest Borgnine; as Hickey in The Iceman Cometh (John Frankenheimer, 1973) with Fredric March and Robert Ryan; The Spikes Gang (Richard Fleischer, 1974) with Noah Beery Jr.; The Klansman (Terence Young, 1974) with Richard Burton; Shout at the Devil (Peter Hunt, 1976), a World War One adventure with Roger Moore; The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday (Don Taylor, 1976), a comic Western with Oliver Reed; and Avalanche Express (Mark Robson, 1978), a Cold War thriller with Robert Shaw who died during production. None of these films were big box office hits. Marvin was offered the role of Quint in Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) but declined, stating "What would I tell my fishing friends who'd see me come off a hero against a dummy shark?". Marvin's last big role was in Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One (1980), a war film based on Fuller's own war experiences. His remaining films were Death Hunt (Peter R. Hunt, 1981), a Canadian action film with Charles Bronson; Gorky Park (Michael Apted, 1983) with William Hurt; and in France Canicule/Dog Day (Yves Boisset, 1984), with Miou-Miou. For TV he did The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1985), a sequel with Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and Richard Jaeckel picking up where they had left off despite being 18 years older. His final appearance was in The Delta Force (Menahem Golan, 1986) with Chuck Norris, playing a role turned down by Charles Bronson. Marvin had married Betty Ebeling in February 1951 and together they had four children, son Christopher Lamont (1952–2013), and three daughters: Courtenay Lee (1954), Cynthia Louise (1956), and Claudia Leslie (1958–2012). Married 16 years, they divorced in 1967. A long-term romantic relationship with Michelle Triola led, after their breakup, to a highly publicized lawsuit in which Triola asked for a substantial portion of Marvin's assets. Her case failed in its main pursuit but did establish a legal precedent for the rights of unmarried cohabitors, the so-called "palimony" law. Marvin reunited with his high school sweetheart, Pamela Feeley and they married in October 1970. She had four children with three previous marriages, they had no children together and remained married until his death in 1987. In December 1986, Marvin was hospitalized for more than two weeks because of a condition related to coccidioidomycosis. He went into respiratory distress and was administered steroids to help his breathing. He had major intestinal ruptures as a result and underwent a colectomy. Marvin died of a heart attack on 29 August 1987 in Tucson, Arizona, aged 63. He was buried with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery.
Sources: Jim Beaver (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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So I saw Doctor Strange for a third time this Thanksgiving Break and the more and more I think about this film, the more I love and the more I can’t wait to see Strange continue on in this universe! And with that post credits scene we got, I’ve been thinking now of how a sequel could look like, so here are my ideas on what a Doctor Strange 2 could look like!
Now the very first thing I’d like to talk about is Scarlet Witch. Now I think the coolest thing I think that could happen in this universe is if after Avengers Infinity War, Doctor Strange takes Scarlet Witch in to train her. Now you may be wondering “isn’t Scarlet Witch just telekinetic?” Well my dear reader, check out this quote from Kevin Feige from the Doctor Strange set visit interviews:
“Her powers, she's never had any training, I'm talking about Scarlet Witch. She never had any training; she's figuring it out. Arguably, you could say that that's why her powers are much more chaotic and much more loose in the way that we showcased those light effects.”
So this means that Scarlet Witch’s magic is really just unfocused magic, which could lead to Strange teaching her on how to do it correctly! It’d be great for Scarlet Witch, it’d give her more characters to interact with and it gives her more than a role in Avengers movies.
My second most wanted thing that I want in Doctor Strange 2 is just like a montage in the begining of him doing Doctor Strange-like things, just like in his most recent comic. In his new comic, you see him going around and having patients like a real doctor, it would be really cool to see how he now interacts with everyday life and could make up for a pretty sweet montage.
Alright, let’s talk about Wong. Contrary to his role in the comics, I believe it would be best for him to serve as a partner and mentor for Strange rather than a servant. It would be great to show Wong still teaching Strange new things so eventually Strange can become the official Sorcerer Supreme.
Alright now finally, let’s talk some villains. So obviously from the end-credits scene *SPOILER*, the plan for the sequel is to have Mordo going around and taking away all the sorcerer's magic. I think that’s a good plotline and will create for some really interesting conflicts between him and Strange. Mordo has a really good shot at becoming one of Marvel’s best villains. I also think that Nightmare is going to show up in this movie because in some interviews with the director, Scott Derrickson, he really wants Nightmare in the sequel and sees the Nightmare Realm as just another dimension. Maybe they could explain dreaming as yourself actually astral projecting yourself to a “Dream Realm” and then when you have a nightmare, you go to the Nightmare Realm or something like that. I think that could work, but I don’t know how that’ll tie into Baron Mordo. Maybe Mordo needs his help to take all the magic from everyone else away. I also think we won’t see any Dormammu in this movie, maybe some more teases to him, but I really hope they save Dormammu in his full glory for the 3rd film.
Well, those are my thoughts on Doctor Strange 2, but what I’m more interested is what are YOUR thoughts on the future Stephen Strange? Leave your ideas down in the comments and let’s discuss! Also, make sure to leave recommendations in the comments of other future movies you’d like me to give my ideas on!
American postcard by The American Postcard Co. Inc., no. 895, 1982. Photo: Bruce Moore / New Line Cinema Corp. Divine, Cookie Mueller, and Susan Walsh in Female Trouble (John Waters, 1974). Caption: Divine as Dawn Davenport and Her Sisters in Crime, from Female Trouble by John Waters.
John Waters's trash spectacular Female Trouble (John Waters, 1974), starring drag legend Divine a.k.a. Harris Glenn Milstead, demolished the boundaries of good taste. It is basically a faux biopic of a Baltimore high school dropout named Dawn Davenport. The anarchic film is director Waters's own favourite from his five-decade career. It was made right off the midnight-movie success of Pink Flamingos (John Waters, 1972) which also starred Divine.
Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble changed Divine from Baltimore's most outrageous resident into an international icon of bad taste cinema. Dawn is pretty much the craggy pinnacle of rebellion. After her parents don't buy her cha-cha heels for Christmas, Dawn flips out, beats her parents up and runs away from home. She's picked up by an anonymous motorist, a burping caricature named Earl Peterson, who is also played by Divine. They fuck on a mattress by the side of the road. In most underground films a scene featuring the lead actor, in two roles, raping himself for two full minutes - and thén taking off his pants - would be the climax, in Female Trouble it 's only the start. The film shows Dawn's progress from loving schoolgirl to single mother, stripper, hooker, burglar, housewife, model and her sordid stardom as an outlaw. Inevitably she has her final rendezvous with the electric chair. Female Trouble is one of John Water's last real underground films, and his first film with an actual coherent script and plotline. Amelia Abraham at Vice: "As in his later film Polyester, by taking the family drama as a genre Waters affords himself a structure against which his carefully orchestrated ironies can play out. Take, most glaringly, the fact that his female protagonist is played by a man in drag. Like all good DIY/punk/trash cinema, the cast is droll and deadpan, but Dawn/Divine's gestures are completely theatrical and her delivery Joan Crawfordesque—it's the ultimate parody of femininity and stardom: a total coup."
"To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about," says John Waters in his book Shock Value. "If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation. But one must remember that there is such a thing as good-bad taste and bad-bad taste. It's easy to disgust someone; I could make a ninety-minute film of someone getting their limbs hacked off, but this would only be bad-bad taste and not very stylish or original. To understand bad taste, one must have very good taste. Good-bad taste can be creatively nauseating but must, at the same time, appeal to the especially twisted sense of humor, which is anything but universal." Amelia Abraham at Vice: And that's just the thing about Female Trouble: Its unique brand of trashy camp is, as with all camp, in the eye of the beholder. If you watch a drag-queen-cum-acid-burn-victim strangling her own daughter and smile, you're depraved enough to be welcomed into the John Waters following. If you're offended by his aesthetic or moral sensibilities—well, his job is done; the boundaries of taste have been pushed." Female Trouble was Water's last film to feature his entire original ensemble of actors: Divine, David Lochary, Mink Stole, Mary Vivian Pierce, Cookie Mueller and Susan Walsh as Dawn's sleazy cohorts, and Edith Massey. Each has a memorable and hilarious role. John Waters has said that this film is the 'ultimate Divine vehicle'. Divine's look literally changes every ten minutes. Mink Stole plays Dawn's 'retarded' 14 year old daughter, and Edith Massey is Aunt Ida, an obese and shameless old slut who constantly urges her nephew Gator to turn gay: "I worry that you'll work in an office, have children, celebrate wedding anniversaries.. the world of a heterosexual is a sick and boring life!".
Sources: Amelia Abraham (Vice), Vanessa McDonnell (Green Slate), and IMDb.
Oh man, it's finally here... I feel like I've been waiting forever for this film, like this is the film that I felt would never come out! But now it's here and this movie's just getting the SHIT. So I gotta be honest with you guys, I was pretty depressed with what everyone was saying so I went in with devastatingly low expectations. So were my low expectations correct, or was I dead wrong? Let's find out!
Good: Alright, first off, Ben Affleck IS Batman. I was enthralled with every scene Batman was in. He is now my favorite Batman, I loved him! Speaking of Batman, one of my favorite scene in this movie and in comic book movies in general now was when Bruce Wayne was in Metropolis during Man of Steel, it was incredible. Also, Alfred was the best, he had his classic Animated Series snarky remarks with Bruce! Now on to Superman. Superman was awesome in this movie and all the things that he had to deal with after the events of Man of Steel. There's this one scene that I won't spoil but was very intense that related to Superman's dilemma and was very sad and powerful. All the other Man of Steel characters were fine like Lois and people like that, but I really liked how they handled Perry White, he was great. Now on to the new character. I loved Lex Luthor! I thought he was really scary because of all the energy he had and you could tell that he had some mental problems. Wonder Woman was awesome, and I thought after seeing this movie that I'd be worried about her movie, but I'm not worried any more! Now let's go to Doomsday. To me, Doomsday worked. He was amazing, but he was fine, he wasn't shit, so that's good. Now some of my favorite scenes that were shown in the trailers were obviously Batman fighting Superman, that was awesome. I also loved all the Nightmare Batman stuff, I wish there was more!! Now there were other great scenes, but I don't want to get into spoilers! Some final things that I liked were the soundtrack, references to other things in the DC universe, and lots of other stuff!
Bad: Now I only had one HUGE problem with this movie, and it's this part of the story that shouldn't have happened. Seriously, I was so annoyed that this one thing happened because A. I was spoiled about it before I saw the movie, and B. this plotline should not have happened in literally in the second movie in this DC universe, I hated it. Now there's also some very minor stuff like some editing of the film, but there are some complaints people are giving that I looked out for when watching the film and I just couldn't see it!
So overall, if I saw this movie back before the reviews came out, I would probably have been disappointed, but because of this hate for the film and my low expectations, I was totally surprised and I absolutely loved it! This film does not deserve a 30% on Rotten Tomatoes! I don't and never will get the hate for Man of Steel, but I understand the complaints for this movie. Now I was almost or maybe just as entertained with this film as I was with Deadpool. Sure this film had one major problem with me, but the good so so so so SOOOO outweighed the bad. I'm going to give this film a rather high score of a 9.5/10. Amazing film? Yes. Best comic book movie ever? No, but certainly in my top ten! But I think we can all agree on that the dawn of the DC universe is here and it's going to be a great one!
The next stop in my “Road to Infinity War” watchathon is the sequel to the film that started it all, Iron Man 2. Now the first Iron Man jump started my interests into Marvel Comics, but Iron Man 2 was the film blew me away with the fact that Marvel was going to make these movies interconnected, I skipped the end credits scene in the first Iron Man because I didn’t even know it had one, but I still remember when I saw that end credits scene with Thor’s hammer and it blew my MIND. After Iron Man 2, I really got into movie news and finding out everything I could possibly know about the upcoming Marvel movies! Though that end credits scene is the only thing I remember getting excited about, I don’t remember how I felt about the movie as a whole. Iron Man 2 is one of the most disliked of the MCU films, so let’s see if this revisiting of the film has soured the hype that I had for it the first time I watched it. Let’s check it out!
Good: Like how I started my first Iron Man review, I gotta start with Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. This film would not nearly be as good as I found it without him, his characters is just so well written and so well acted that it makes you forget about the various flaws this movie carries with it. In this film we get a continued progression of the Tony Stark that I feel like we lost after the first Avengers, where he’s still a playboy, he’s still cocky, yet this time he’s Iron Man and the world knows it, which is all for his benefit, kinda. We’re introduced to a plotline that the arc reactor is poisoning his blood and if he doesn’t find a suitable replacement, he could die. This plotline brings a new challenge to Robert Downey Jr. and it was one of my favorite subplots of the film. It lead to great scenes like Tony fighting Rhodey at his birthday party. That scene is awesome and speaking of Rhodey, Don Cheadle was such a great replacement from Terrence Howard as War Machine in this film! All the scenes with Iron Man and War Machine together are awesome. My favorite action scene in the movie is when Iron Man and War Machine take on those drones in that indoor garden at the end of the movie. The action is really well shot and I was very surprised how good sure the visual effects are in this film. Iron Man’s suit has slowly downgraded in terms of quality over the years, I remember there’s one shot of Tony wearing the suit in Civil War that looks pretty bad, but in this movie everything looks very realistic. I also think the Iron Man suit in this movie is my favorite one in the MCU, I’m a fan of the triangle arc reactor! Finally, I’d like to give Sam Rockwell some love, I thought he was a pretty decent villain. Rockwell plays Justin Hammer who in this film is such a loser of a character so well and even when Hammer thinks he’s on time, he still acts like a complete loser which lead to some great comedy.
Bad: Now when people say that Marvel has a villain problem, they are 100% valid because the villain in this movie sucks. Unlike villains like Malekith from Thor: the Dark World, this character is not one dimensional, but he’s just so poorly written and acted by Mickey Rourke, I feel like he doesn’t even belong in this movie! It just so bad and then at the end of the film, he’s just another big grey bad guy that Iron Man and War Machine deal with pretty easily. Now the villain is my biggest complaint of the film, but Iron Man 2 deals with a very common problem with other films that try to jump start a cinematic universe, which is cramming too many storylines into one film. We have the Tony dying storyline, we have the War Machine storyline, we have the Whiplash storyline, and we have the Avengers Initiative storyline. Now I think the Black Widow and Avengers stuff could’ve been completely removed and had the other storylines expanded upon because it everything Avenger-related that’s covered in this movie is kinda retreaded in the Avengers. Now I’m a big fan of Black Widow in the MCU, but I don’t think she was very well handled in this movie. Although I like the interactions between Tony and Black Widow, after watching Natasha and her character progression in the following MCU films, her character just feels so off.
Overall, I believe Iron Man 2 is not as bad as people say it is. Despite its huge flaws in the villain and the amount of story that it tries to cram into one two hour flick, it’s still at the end of the day a story about the Tony Stark that we grew to know and love in his first outing with an expanded world and some incredible action. I understand why people would like this movie a lot less than I did, but I think Jon Favreau directed the hell out of a pretty poor script, which is why I’m going to give Iron Man 2 props, but I won’t remember it as one of the greats of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. For these reasons, I’m going to give Iron Man 2 a 7.25/10. Let me know what your thoughts on Iron Man 2 are in the comments below and stay tuned for my review of Thor next week!
the REAL GHOSTBUSTERS!!!!! Original director son
along with plotlines from first two will be replicated along with ECTO-1
trailer.................
consequenceofsound.net/2019/01/ecto-1-ghostbusters-teaser...
English postcard by Superior, no. PC 92. Photo: Illuminations 3 + Ltd. Sylvester Stallone in Rambo - First Blood Part II (George P. Cosmatos, 1985).
Sylvester Stallone (1946) is an athletically built, dark-haired American actor/screenwriter/director. Film fans worldwide have been flocking to see Stallone's films for over 30 years, making "Sly" one of Hollywood's biggest-ever box office draws.
Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone was born in 1946, in New York's gritty Hell's Kitchen. His parents were Jackie Stallone (née Labofish), an astrologer, and Frank Stallone, an Italian immigrant who worked as a beautician, and hairdresser. After his parents divorced, he moved with his mother and her new husband, a pizza manufacturer, Anthony 'Tony' Filiti, to Philadelphia. His siblings are actor Frank Stallone, half-sister Toni D'Alto, and Dante Stallone. The young Stallone attended the American College of Switzerland and the University of Miami, eventually obtaining a B.A. degree. He was 23 years old when he got his first starring role in the softcore sex film The Party at Kitty and Stud's (Morton M. Lewis, 1970) in which he played the role of Stud 'The Italian Stallion'. He was paid $200 to play the sex-craved gigolo and appeared nude. In 1976, the film was re-released as The Italian Stallion after Sly's success with Rocky (John G. Avildsen, 1976). In between, he first struggled in small parts in films such as the thriller Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971) starring Jane Fonda, and the comedy Bananas (Woody Allen, 1971). He got a crucial career break alongside fellow young actors Henry Winkler and Perry King, sharing lead billing in the effectively written teen gang film The Lords of Flatbush (Martin Davidson, Stephen Verona, 1974). He also wrote the screenplay for the modestly successful film. Further film and television roles followed, most of them in uninspiring productions except for the opportunity to play a megalomaniac, bloodthirsty race driver named "Machine Gun Joe Viterbo" opposite David Carradine in the Roger Corman-produced Death Race 2000 (Paul Bartel, 1975). However, Stallone was also keen to be recognised as a screenwriter, not just an actor, and, inspired by the 1975 Muhammad Ali-Chuck Wepner fight in Cleveland, Stallone wrote a film script about a nobody fighter given the "million to one opportunity" to challenge for the heavyweight title. Rocky (John G. Avildsen, 1976) became the stuff of cinematic legends, scoring ten Academy Award nominations, winning the Best Picture Award of 1976, and triggering one of the most financially successful film series in history. Whilst full credit is wholly deserved by Stallone, he was duly supported by tremendous acting from fellow cast members Talia Shire, Burgess Meredith, and Burt Young, and director John G. Avildsen gave the film an emotive, earthy appeal from start to finish. Stallone had truly arrived on his terms and offers poured in from various studios eager to secure Hollywood's hottest new star.
Sylvester Stallone followed Rocky (John G. Avildsen, 1976) with F.I.S.T (Norman Jewison, 1978), loosely based on the life of Teamsters boss "Jimmy Hoffa", and Paradise Alley (Sylvester Stallone, 1978) before pulling on the boxing gloves again to resurrect Rocky Balboa in the sequel Rocky II (Sylvester Stallone, 1979). The second outing for the "Italian Stallion" wasn't as powerful or successful as the first "Rocky", however, it still produced a strong box office. Subsequent films Nighthawks (Bruce Malmuth, 1981) with Rutger Hauer, and Escape to Victory (John Huston, 1981) with Michael Caine and Pelé failed to ignite with audiences, so Stallone was once again lured back to familiar territory with Rocky III (Sylvester Stallone, 1982) and a fearsome opponent in "Clubber Lang" played by muscular ex-bodyguard, Mr. T. The third "Rocky" installment far outperformed the first sequel in box office takings, but Stallone retired his prizefighter for a couple of years as another series was about to commence for the busy actor. The character of Green Beret "John Rambo" was the creation of Canadian-born writer David Morrell, and his novel was adapted to the screen with Stallone in the lead role in First Blood (Ted Kotcheff, 1982), also starring Richard Crenna and Brian Dennehy. The film was a surprise hit that polarised audiences because of its commentary about the Vietnam war, which was still relatively fresh in the American public's psyche. Political viewpoints aside, the film was a worldwide smash, and a sequel soon followed with Rambo: First Blood Part II (George P. Cosmatos, 1985), which drew even stronger criticism from several quarters owing to the film's plotline about American MIAs allegedly being held in Vietnam. But they say there is no such thing as bad publicity, and "John Rambo's" second adventure was a major money-spinner for Stallone and cemented him as one of the top male stars of the 1980s. In between, he did his own singing in Did all of his own singing in Rhinestone (Bob Clark, 1984) with Dolly Parton. Riding a wave of amazing popularity, Stallone called on old sparring partner Rocky Balboa to climb back into the ring to defend American pride against a Soviet threat in the form of a towering Russian boxer named "Ivan Drago" played by curt Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV (Sylvester Stallone, 1985). The fourth outing was somewhat controversial with "Rocky" fans, as violence levels seemed excessive compared to previous "Rocky" films, especially with the savage beating suffered by Apollo Creed, played by Carl Weathers, at the hands of the unstoppable "Siberian Express".
Sylvester Stallone continued forward with a slew of macho character-themed films that met with a mixed reception from his fans. Cobra (George P. Cosmatos, 1986) with his wife Brigitte Nielsen was a clumsy mess, Over the Top (Menahem Golan, 1987) was equally mediocre, Rambo III (Peter MacDonald, 1988) saw Rambo take on the Russians in Afghanistan, and cop buddy film Tango & Cash (Andrey Konchalovskiy, 1989) just did not quite hit the mark, although it did feature a top-notch cast and there was chemistry between Stallone and co-star Kurt Russell. Philadelphia's favourite mythical boxer moved out of the shadows for his fifth screen outing in Rocky V (John G. Avildsen, 1990) tackling Tommy "Machine" Gunn played by real-life heavyweight fighter Tommy Morrison, the great-nephew of screen legend John Wayne. Sly quickly followed with the lukewarm comedy Oscar (John Landis, 1991) with Ornella Muti, the painfully unfunny Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (Roger Spottiswoode, 1992) with "Golden Girl" Estelle Getty, the futuristic action film Demolition Man (Marco Brambilla, 1993) with Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock, and the comic book-inspired Judge Dredd (Danny Cannon, 1995). Interestingly, Stallone then took a departure from the gung-ho steely characters he had been portraying to stack on a few extra pounds and tackle a more dramatically challenging role in the intriguing Cop Land (James Mangold, 1997), also starring Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, and Ray Liotta. It isn't a classic of the genre, but Cop Land (1997) certainly surprised many critics with Stallone's understated performance. He has been nominated a record 30 times for the Golden Raspberry Awards, usually in the "Worst Actor" category, and has won 10 times. The Golden Raspberry Award Foundation awarded him a special "Worst Actor of the Century" award in 2000.
Sylvester Stallone lent his voice to the animated adventure story Antz (Eric Darnell, Tim Johnson, 1998), reprised the role made famous by Michael Caine in a terrible remake of Get Carter (Stephen Kay, 2000), climbed back into a race car for Driven (Renny Harlin, 2001), and guest-starred as the "Toymaker" in the third chapter of the popular "Spy Kids" film series, Spy Kids 3: Game Over (Robert Rodriguez, 2003). in 2005 he published his book 'Sly Moves: My Proven Program to Lose Weight, Build Strength, Gain Will Power, and Live Your Dream'. Showing that age had not wearied his two most popular series, Sylvester Stallone brought back never-say-die boxer Rocky Balboa to star in Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone, 2006), and Vietnam veteran Rambo reappeared after a 20-year hiatus to once again right wrongs in the jungles of Thailand in Rambo (Sylvester Stallone, 2008). Another success was The Expendables (Sylvester Stallone, 2010), abound a band of highly skilled mercenaries played by Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and other 'dinosaurs' from the 1980's action film teamed up with each other. The action film opened at number one at the U.S. box office with a first weekend gross of $35 million. This makes Sylvester Stallone the only person in Hollywood history to have starred in films that have opened atop the box office charts over five consecutive decades. Soon followed the less successful sequels The Expendables 2 (Simon West, 2012) and The Expendables 3 (Patrick Hughes, 2014). In between, he also appeared with Schwarzenegger in Escape Plan (Mikael Håfström, 2013). Stallone got rave reviews, his first Golden Globe, and an Oscar nomination for his role in the sports film Creed (Ryan Coogler, 2015) opposite Michael B. Jordan. Once again he played Rocky Balboa who serves as a trainer and mentor to Adonis Johnson, the son of his late friend and former rival Apollo Creed. In 2017, Stallone appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (James Gunn, 2017) as Stakar Ogord / Starhawk, the leader of a Ravagers faction. Then followed Creed II (Steven Caple Jr., 2018) and Rambo: Last Blood (Adrian Grunberg, 2019). The latter film grossed $91 million worldwide against a production budget of $50 million. Sylvester Stallone married three times. His first wife was Sasha Czack (1974-1985) with whom he has two children: Sage and Seargeoh Stallone. Sage acted with Sylvester in Rocky V (1990) and Daylight (1996) and was found dead in 2012 in Los Angeles. From 1985 till 1987, Sly was married to Danish actress Brigitte Nielsen. Since 1997, he is married to Jennifer Flavin, with whom he has three children: Sophia Rose, Sistine Rose, and Scarlet Rose Stallone. Firehouse at IMDb: "Love him or loathe him, Sylvester Stallone has built an enviable and highly respected career in Hollywood, plus, he has considerably influenced modern popular culture through several of his iconic film characters."
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
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Belgian collectors card by Kwatta, Bois d'Haine, no. C. 171. Photo: M.G.M.Lucille Bremer and Fred Astaire in Yolanda and the Thief (Vincente Minnelli, 1945).
American dancer and actor Fred Astaire (1899-1987) was a unique dancer with his top hat and tails, his uncanny sense of rhythm, perfectionism, and innovation. He began his highly successful partnership with Ginger Rogers in Flying Down to Rio (1933). They danced together in 10 musicals in which he made all song and dance routines integral to the plotlines. Another innovation was that a closely tracking dolly camera filmed his dance routines in as few shots as possible.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.