text:
All Politics Is Local: Kristian Fraga's Anytown, USA
I've avoided praising Kristian Fraga's documentary Anytown, USA, about a brutal mayoral race in Bogota, New Jersey, for the same reason I've avoided praising any good movie directed by someone who happens to be my friend—because anything I wrote, no matter how intricately justified, would be read in some quarters as logrolling. But since Anytown is playing on one screen in Los Angeles this week, and will be gone as of Thursday, I'm putting aside my qualms and telling you, flat-out, that if you live anywhere near LA and you're thinking about seeing a movie this weekend, forget every other choice; you owe it to yourself to see this one in a theater with an audience. It's an accomplished and deceptively ambitious movie: a straightforward record of a particular time and place, a frank but affectionate portrait of small-town life, a satire on American hypocrisy, a mostly wry but sometimes ruthless comedy, and—most surprisingly—a cogent look at the tension between the crude iconography and childish hostility that erupt during close contests, and the deep-rooted human desires that make low tactics irresistible.
From its opening sequence—which shows incumbent Republican mayor Steven Lonegan fretting on election night, worrying that one of his two opponents, a Democrat and an independent, will unseat him—Anytown establishes its sneaky m.o., inflating familiar, even cliched images, devices and moods to Macy's-parade-balloon dimensions, and then deflating them with little jabs of truth. The movie then flashes back to eight months earlier and paints an exuberant portrait of Bogota that combines the warmth of family anecdote and the fuck-you wit of a good political cartoon. Fraga's faux-satirical tone makes the town seem like Harper Valley by way of The Simpsons' impulse-driven Springfield. But the images work at cross-purposes; Anytown is photographed (by Jonathan Wolff, who shot my first feature, Home) in glazed, often faintly ethereal textures that recall the early Massapequa sequences in Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July; in this fleet-footed prelude, as is the case throughout Anytown, Fraga asks you to hold two contradictory opinions or emotions in your head at the same time—superimposing the town's idealized self-image on top of the roiling, often rancid facts of life during an election year, building the interplay between lies and truth into the very structure of the movie you're watching.
Lonegan, an entrenched political boss who's stayed in power thanks to street smarts, a tough staff and his own blatantly propagandistic newspaper, The Bogotian—which exists mainly to slime the mayor's enemies—figured he was a shoo-in for re-election. But then he made the perpelexing tactical error of slashing the town's school budget by $300,000 and gutting its football program in the process. When the townspeople berate Lonegan at public hearings, they seem to be brandishing invisible torches. Yet few of them dare acknowledge a central hypocrisy exposed in Fraga's scene-setting, man-on-the-street montage: some of the same folks who are furious at Lonegan over the austerity-mandated budget cuts are also demanding lower property taxes. (Message to the mayor: Stiff the schools, but whatever you do, don't stiff the schools.)
Despite the public's compromised ire, Lonegan is such a smug bastard that he jump-starts the audience's inclination to root for the underdog, any underdog. In Bogota, there are two. One is Fred Pesce, a Democratic councilman and longtime Lonegan foe who enters the race even though almost no one can muster any enthusiasm for his candidacy apart from the fact that he's not Lonegan. He's a lump with no vision beyond an image of himself behind the mayor's desk, and a persona so dull that he seems to be running for Chairman of the Bored. Lonegan's other opponent is a wild card: Dave Musikant, former high school football star and well-liked eccentric who's now living with his mother and going blind from a degenerative eye disease. (In one of those you-can-make-this-up coincidences, Lonegan is legally blind himself; insert one-eyed man cliche here.) To prove he's serious about winning, Musikant somehow convinces a top national campaign manager to come on board and devise an anti-Lonegan strategy. (One of the Musikant team's most seemingly sophomoric ideas—hiring a guy dressed as a giant pencil to canvas the town and remind people to write in Musikant's name—turns out to be quite effective.) Personally, Musikant is a ray of sunshine—an indestructibly upbeat fellow who once made an inspirational video titled, "Live Your Dreams Everyday." Unfortunately, he's even more hapless than Pesce.
When Musikant's candidacy gains surprising traction, Fraga deliberately shifts into Rocky mode. But as in the opening section, the invocation of established commercial storytelling techniques is very sophisticated—both heartfelt and self-critical. Your own need to cheer Musikant—and expect, even demand, a decisive victory over Lonegan—is undercut by sobering political facts, from Musikant's lack of organization and cash to the Lonegan team's superior grasp of Machiavellian tactics. Plus, as hissable as Lonegan is, you have to give the man props for understanding that campaigning is different from actually running things—that elections are, in essence, nonviolent, symbolically charged, highly ritualized versions of war, and that in war, you fight dirty, and put off dealing with the consequences until after you've been sworn in. To watch Anytown is to understand the difference between what citizens claim to want and what they crave—between the rosy ideals of politics and the dung-strewn reality. Fraga's tricky construction—indulging pomp and lies in order to scrutinize them—encourages viewers to understand how social conditioning, via both politics and moviegoing, imbues us with an irrational need to view every tight election as a good-vs.-evil melodrama; and how this same makes us ripe targets for fearmongering, disinformation and manipulation.
Thankfully, though, this isn't another facile condemnation of a broken system. The closing section—the town waking up on election day and moving en masse toward the polls, taking every minute seriously—is an inspiring depiction of democracy's goodness (and corrupted, or untapped, potential). Fraga insists there's no such thing as an unimportant election, and—a radical point in demoralized times—no such thing as standing outside of politics. The process affects all citizens, whether they choose to participate or recuse themselves for (often specious) moral or intellectual reasons; so all things considered, it's better to be involved, because you might surprise yourself and make a difference. As one citizen observes in the movie's opening section, "In a little town like this, every vote counts. It's not like voting for the president."
For information about Anytown USA's Los Angeles run August 4-6, click here.
We're committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or subscription fees—so if you like what we do, please consider becoming a SLANT patron:
Virtue in Vice
Review: Secrets
Review: Oliver Stone's Talk Radio on Twilight Time Blu-ray
Cannes Film Review: Girls of the Sun, Dogman, & The Wild Pear Tree
Cannes Film Festival 2018: Winner Predictions
Maron discusses modern media discourse, the communicative bridge linking his acting with his podcast, and how he likes to be directed.
Chuck Bowen
Photo: IFC Films
Marc Maron is presently enjoying one of the most unlikely and inspiring success stories in Hollywood. Once known as a bitter "comic's comic" who was eclipsed in success by contemporaries such as Louis C.K. and Jon Stewart, Maron has been reborn into a poster boy for empathy, starting with his blockbuster podcast, "WTF," and continuing with roles in the hit television series Maron, Easy, and GLOW. With each role, Maron has rapidly evolved from a "comic who acts" into a first-rate character actor capable of subtly altering his charisma to fit a variety of oddballs who, like himself, struggle with self-doubt while attempting to walk a straight and sober path.
Now, with Sword of Truth, Maron makes his debut as a cinematic lead, playing Mel, a pawnshop owner who ends up on a road trip that stirs long-festering feelings of estrangement, which parallels the forms of isolation gripping a variety of other characters, and which the film's director, Lynn Shelton, links to the reactionary myths and politics currently gripping this country. The role marks another career high point for Maron, who talked to me last week about the communicative bridge linking his acting with his podcast, how he likes to be directed, and the "mind-fuckery" currently gripping modern media discourse.
Given that you've previously worked with Lynn Shelton on Maron and GLOW, did you two have a kind of collaborative shorthand going into Sword of Trust?
Well, I'm generally filled with anxiety and resistance. I don't know if there's a shorthand, but Lynn knows how to get the best out of me and works with me pretty well. I like directors who're hands on with me and guide me.
Do you like to receive a lot of explicit direction, or is your process more intuitive?
Well, I do what I do. I definitely welcome suggestions, because I'm certainly not going to think of all the possibilities of a scene. Most of my choices are not necessarily correct. I usually come in pretty intense and hot, and there's subtleties that can be coaxed out with minor tweaks. And I like working like that. I wouldn't have the confidence to assume that my take is the "right" one necessarily.
There's a stillness to you in Sword of Trust that I'm not sure we've seen before.
Your weight as a performer is really felt here, especially in that scene when Mel first see Lynn's character in his shop. I love how you enter the room from the closet, and how one can feel the emotion bubbling up in Mel.
Thanks, man. I think this is a heavy-hearted guy who's sort of surrendered to his lot in life. He also has a certain amount invested in his own. I don't know if it's heartache, but he's definitely a broken dude who's making the best of whatever time he has left. I don't know if the other characters are really like that. They are always in forward motion.
You also inform Mel's appraising of objects with all these lovely emotional textures. He's not only talking about a sword.
The guitar too. As I act more, I try to take some of the space that you're talking about. With acting I feel that I've been learning on the job in a way, and over time I've started to explore different possibilities with owning whatever my space is, whether it's a movie or on stage. Certainly, over decades of doing stand-up, I've figured out my space on a stage, but being on a set and pacing yourself and taking the time to engage with what's around you I think makes a lot of difference in how a performance comes off. It's about being present in an environment.
Has your ascending acting career changed how you relate to actors on your podcast?
Over the last few years, since I've started acting more, I've had more actors on. I tend to try to pull a nice acting class out of that. I think a lot of what my guests say makes sense. Once again, a lot of acting is about listening and being present. In another time in my life, I saw certain actors as mythic. Now that I've talked to so many of them, I've started to realize, not in a disappointing way, that…what's the word I want? That these are people doing a job, all in their own way. Once you get upset with people, you realize, "Well, that's how they're approaching this job," and when you get into the ring or the scene, you're in it.
That inside knowledge gives "WTF" an edge too. For many interviewers, like myself, art-making is basically theory. But you have your feet on the ground so to speak.
I think that happens over time. I don't think I ever set out to interview. I've framed what happens on my podcast as conversations, and they either go somewhere or they don't. There's a few points I may get hung up on, and there are places I go to fairly regularly in interviews, but I generally don't see these conversations as question-and-answer situations. I don't have any expectations really other than to feel a connection or to sort of be enlightened. I think those of you who have a job to interview, for an outlet, for the content and the word count and everything else, might have more restrictions. I don't have to answer to anybody and I don't know what I'm looking for half the time.
Yeah, and a challenge I've found with interviews isn't entirely knowing what is and isn't in bounds, which can lead to an impersonal vibe. By contrast, your podcast has such an intimate layer throughout.
You have to feel that stuff out, you know I'm not necessarily intuitive about that. I'm not really in the business of sandbagging anybody.
Usually you get somebody comfortable and things come out. If people are comfortable and engaged it doesn't really matter what they're talking about. Audiences will say, "Oh, wow, I didn't know that." These conversations don't require information, but an emotional connection. I'm so happy about that, especially considering the never-ending torrent of garbage that we have to move through every day.
I think about politics. Politics online are rarely civil, but when you get someone in person, and start slowly, and are willing to have a conversation, you can normally get farther than you might expect.
Online culture isn't civil and there's a momentum to everything that's based on mind-fuckery. I know for myself—as somebody who was relatively disinterested and uninformed about the functions of government and why politics and leadership make a difference—that people are perfectly willing to volunteer their brains to these strange flashpoint reactors that trigger them emotionally. People live by these black-and-white decisions. It's not good. We need to consider what we really know and how we know it and what we're telling other people.
People are so empowered by garbage information that's being related in a relatively shallow way, which doesn't take into consideration the influence and context of the rest of our lives. It's sort of a disaster. I try to stay away from that stuff in terms of the conversations that I'm having. I'm trying to deal with something more human and experiential. Most people are regurgitating talking points on both sides without thinking of how someone feels and how to affect change. I got an interview with Geena Davis [who stars in the new season of GLOW] coming up, about her work with her foundation and her work in this documentary about women in show business. It's called This Changes Everything. I tell you man, when someone's that personally invested in something they believe in, and it's righteous, and they lay it out for you and it makes sense, that's what heartens my belief in this possibility for change.
To change gears a bit, is it cathartic for you, as someone who's long been in recovery, to play characters who're either reformed or have drug issues?
Yeah, sure. Most obviously there's the last season of Maron, where my character has a relapse, which frankly didn't happen in real life. When you really understand the nature of addiction, and you've seen it from the inside, and know the powerlessness and the struggle to live a live that's not in the throes of it—I mean, it's such a common struggle. And what's amazing to me is how many people don't find a way out of that or don't seek help. Or are ashamed of it or don't know how to get the help. I never set out to do this, but I'm thrilled and humbled by the effect my work has on people who're isolated by this sickness. It's really one of the more satisfying results of the podcast: how much mail I get from people who're struggling and who want advice, or who feel less alone from what I've said. The great thing about recovery, and about playing these parts, is that it gives you a context that's very specific—a way to legitimately help people that can change their entire lives.
Bell proves uncannily adept at capturing moments that seem to encapsulate a subject's entire emotional temperature.
Photo: Janus Films
Decades after its original release, Martin Bell's Streetwise remains a boldly empathetic work of vérité portraiture. Throughout the 1984 documentary, Bell, photographer Mary Ellen Mark, and journalist Cheryl McCall follow a motley group of kids on the streets of Seattle as they panhandle, dig food out of dumpsters, and prostitute themselves to much older men. These scenes are accompanied by voiceovers from the young subjects, who describe their actions with a heartbreaking casualness that communicates two almost contradictory meanings: that they're seasoned hustlers, having bypassed childhood for an everyday form of hell, and that they're desperate to be seen precisely as said hustlers. To show emotion is to be vulnerable, and these subjects can't afford to be seen as weak, yet the filmmakers capture more here than the street children may have suspected. Streetwise is charged by a deep, subterranean yearning to be loved, or even merely felt.
A plot hasn't been imposed on Streetwise, as the audience is allowed to feel the numbing monotony of life on the fringes. People swing in and out of prison, crash in and out of secret hovels, most notably an abandoned hotel, and practice their grifts, while struggling with overlapping tides of addiction and depression. We also learn, startlingly, that not all these children are homeless. Streetwise's most famous subject, Erin Blackwell, a.k.a. "Tiny," lives with her mother, a waitress and alcoholic who rationalizes her daughter's prostitution as a phase and who seems to be impressed with Erin's ability to make a few hundred dollars on a good day. It's little wonder that Erin captured and continued to command the filmmakers' attention for decades after filming Streetwise ended. She has a squinty yet expressive glare that suggests both a deep reservoir of pain as well as intense fierceness.
Bell, Mark, and McCall take Erin and her cohorts, most vividly a skinny boy with potential tonsillitis named DeWayne Pomeroy, at face value. Streetwise is pointedly devoid of the sermonizing that might allow audiences to comfortably distance themselves from these people, regarding them simply as elements of a civics lesson. The film forces us to confront the obviousness of these children's circumstances, as people walk by them just as we all walk by the homeless on a daily basis. This sense of culpability informs Streetwise with an uncomfortable texture that's familiar to documentaries concerned with poor or mentally and emotionally challenged people, so you may wonder how the filmmakers shot what we're seeing without stepping in and helping these people. Particularly disturbing is when Erin, 13 years old at the start of filming, is seen getting into a car with an old man who's obviously a john.
If Streetwise was just a portrait of damnation and delusion, it would be an important document. But the film is also haunting for Bell, Mark, and McCall's attention to the transcendence than can be felt even in such extreme circumstances. After Erin has gotten into trouble, DeWayne tells her of how he will rescue her, and his attempt at gallantry is poignant as well as devastating. When DeWayne visits his father in prison, the old man lectures the boy about keeping his smoking down and laying off the hard drugs, commanding DeWayne to roll up his shirt sleeves for a track-mark inspection. As brutally sad as this confrontation is, one feels this father's love and wonders if DeWayne, clearly a sensitive and lonely boy, can feel it too. Retrospectively, it hardly matters: DeWayne hung himself not long after this visit.
Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell, a 2016 sequel to Streetwise that's been in the works for thirtysomething years, offers a variety of unmooring contrasts from its predecessor. Erin is no longer the slim spitfire of Streetwise, but an overweight fortysomething mother of 10 who understandably appears to always be on the verge of exhaustion, and who takes methadone in an attempt to keep her drug addictions at bay while wrangling with her children's own skirmishes with the law. Looking at Erin now, one sees the scars and weariness left by a hard life, part of which was documented by Streetwise, and one can implicitly feel Erin's need for atonement. Though Erin's gotten off the streets, living in a large home with her partner, Will, and several of her children, the streets have never left her.
Formally, Tiny is much different from Streetwise. The 1984 film abounds in seamy noises and textures, with roving camerawork that seems to be uncovering a new lurid discovery every few seconds; it feels palpably dangerous, and probably inspired films such as Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho and Larry's Clark's Kids. Set predominantly in Erin's home, Tiny is slower and more polished, reflecting the (comparative) stability that Erin has achieved since appearing in Streetwise. Tiny also has a fancier structure than Streetwise, with a framing device in which Erin watches footage of herself over the years, including unused outtakes from the first film, with Mary Ellen Mark. An autumnal tone seeps into the new film, which offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of the unending legacies of crime and addiction.
As in Streetwise, Bell proves uncannily adept at capturing moments that seem to encapsulate a subject's entire emotional temperature. There are frequent shots in Tiny of Erin sleeping with a little dog close to her face, which suggest rare moments of repose for a woman who's used to running her chaotic family like a hostage negotiator. Erin frequently calls the cops on her own children, especially the headstrong teenager Rayshon, which Bell unforgettably rhymes with footage form Streetwise of a younger Erin visiting two of her children in foster care. One of the foster care children, Keanna, is now a mother herself, and resents Erin for abandoning her and for continuing to struggle with drug use.
Which is to say that Tiny is as charged with turmoil as Streetwise, and Bell proves equally capable here of rendering full relationships with only a few images or seconds of running time. As in Streetwise, our sympathies are rarely overtly directed, as Tiny is somehow on every character's contradictory wavelength at once, illustrating how difficult understanding can be to achieve, most notably in the face of disaster. Though it runs a trim 87 minutes, Tiny offers an epic and piercing portrait of a large biracial family that's plagued by essentially every demon known to American society. Erin escaped the streets only to fashion a home that's rife with the very issues that drove her away from her own mother. Like most people, regardless of social stature, Erin is stuck in the temporal loop of her own inherent nature.
Jude's film is a bitterly comic essay on nationalist mythologies and historical amnesia.
Keith Watson
Photo: Big World Pictures
Prime minister of Romania during most of World War II, Ion Antonescu is one of the era's supreme villains: a virulent anti-Semite, Nazi collaborator, and authoritarian dictator whose troops murdered Jews with such velocity and enthusiasm that even Hitler was shocked by their actions. Upon ordering the forced expulsion—and, if necessary, genocide—of the Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina, Antonescu proclaimed, "I do not care if we go down in history as Barbarians." Radu Jude borrows that declaration, so haunting in its cruelty and disarming in its blitheness, for the title of his latest film, a bitterly comic essay on nationalist mythologies and historical amnesia that locates the seeds of Romania's currently resurgent ethno-nationalism in the nation's collective failure to truly confront its own past.
For while Antonescu was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death by firing squad shortly after the war, there have been repeated attempts to rehabilitate his image in Romania since the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Take Sergiu Nicolaescu's 1994 film The Mirror, a hagiographic treatment of Antonescu's rule that portrays the leader as a defiant protector of his people. Jude inserts a substantial clip of that film into I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians, having it play on a small TV set positioned in the exact center of the frame as we hear the off-screen voice of Jude's protagonist, Mariana (Ioana Iacob), providing sardonic, outraged commentary on the film's distorted presentation of Antonescu as a misunderstood hero. There's an element of desperation in the scene: While Mariana offers an incontestable rebuttal, no one but her boyfriend (Alex Bogdan) is there to hear it. Meanwhile, The Mirror's comforting nationalist lies are being beamed into homes all across Romania.
A headstrong theater director attempting to stage a public reenactment of the Odessa Massacre of 1941, in which Romanian troops slaughtered thousands of Ukrainian Jews, Mariana is obsessed with bringing the full weight of historical reality to her fellow countrymen. She obsessively reads histories of the period and drops quotations from philosophers and historical figures into everyday conversation. The film is consumed by lengthy, probing conversations—mostly shot by a statically mounted 16mm camera that pans back and forth to cover the actors' movements—in which Mariana discusses art, philosophy, history, and politics with her various collaborators and friends.
Her most persistent interlocutor is Movilă (Alexandru Dabija), a local official tasked with overseeing the publicly funded production, who constantly pleads with Mariana to tone down her work's unvarnished depiction of anti-Semitic violence. Movilă is a relativist, content in the knowledge that all memory is willfully selective, while Mariana truly believes in the power of stark historical truth. Though at times didactic and overloaded with quotations from the likes of Wittgenstein and Arendt, Jude's dialogue nevertheless manages to feel remarkably naturalistic. That's thanks in no small part to the powerfully unaffected performances of a cast that finds the subtle humor and neurotic character details embedded in Jude's dense screenplay. Iacob captures Mariana's unrelenting passion while also finding moments of vulnerability and self-doubt in the role, including moments of hesitation and anxiety borne of the fact that she's a petite, cosmopolitan woman attempting to exert control over a large cast of rugged men, many of whom are diametrically opposed to the vision of her project.
Jude's heavy themes are leavened by a self-effacing sense of modesty. Jude isn't attempting to make grand pronouncements about the nature of memory and truth. Rather, I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians finds the director constantly interrogating his own perspective, questioning Mariana's relationship to the wider public. That theme comes to a head in the film's climactic presentation of the artist's reenactment. Here, Jude switches from the warm dreaminess of 16mm to the harsh hyper-realism of digital video. The scene has the feel of a simple documentation of a live public event, but it isn't clear that it's actually any more "real" than the rest of the film. In particular, whether and to what extent the crowd of onlookers' reactions are coached remains one of the film's most intriguing enigmas.
Ultimately, Mariana finds herself perplexed and deflated by the public's response to her work. One senses this reaction may be autobiographical for Jude, whose film Aferim! attempted to challenge Romanian audiences about the nation's historical treatment of Roma people. As one of the few directors of the so-called Romanian New Wave whose work explores the country's unsavory pre-Soviet past, Jude is swimming against the popular tide of revisionism and historical moral blindness. The anti-Semitic violence and hatred laid out in his latest is truly chilling, as is the contemporary tendency to diminish and obscure that dark past. But perhaps most disturbing of all is the idea put forth in the film's conclusion: that one could present the truth to the public in all its brutality and horror, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference.
Cast: Ioana Iacob, Alexandru Dabija, Alex Bogdan, Ilinca Manolache, Serban Pavlu, Ion Rizea, Claudia Ieremia Director: Radu Jude Screenwriter: Radu Jude Distributor: Big World Pictures Running Time: 140 min Rating: NR Year: 2018
The filmmaker discusses how she wants viewers to feel like they're paratrooping into her characters' lives.
Marshall Shaffer
Lynn Shelton has amassed a formidable body of work between her eight features and countless television episodes. Her latest outing, the comic adventure Sword of Trust, represents her most topical work to date. After pawn shop owner Mel (played by Marc Maron) purchases an old sword, he gets plunged into world of conspiracy culture as the relic attracts legions of online prowlers convinced that the weapon represents proof that the Confederacy won the Civil War. The logline might be Shelton's wildest yet, but the elements that have made her work indelible for over a decade remain intact: realistic conversations, emotional authenticity, and a commitment to multi-dimensional characters.
I chatted with Shelton on Sword of Trust's opening day, which saw the director, writer, producer, editor, and occasional actress in great spirits. Our conversation covered her pursuit of Maron for this specific project, how she developed her unique script-development process, and why she wants viewers to feel like they're paratrooping into her characters' lives.
Last year on Marc Maron's podcast, you mentioned that you liked exploring relationships between people who wouldn't normally interact. Sword of Trust continues in that tradition for you. What keeps bringing you back to these dynamics?
Have you heard of this theory of multiple intelligences, like different types of intelligences we have? I can't remember the names that [Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner] came up with, I think there's eight. I know I'm not the brightest bulb on all of these scales, but one way that I think I'm pretty high is in emotional intelligence. I like to think I am, anyway. I've always been that close observer of human behavior. I also really love humans. I feel like the thing that makes humans human are their flaws. So, on screen, I don't like to see people who are too smoothed out, all good or all bad. I'm interested in characters who are essentially good people, but they may be total fuck-ups and well-meaning who may sabotage themselves. Individual fucking up often happens in relation to other people. We may have a pre-determined need to connect to other people, but we're constantly sabotaging ourselves.
Sometimes, like I said on the podcast, I'm much more interested in unlikely combinations of people because it's not a prewritten script we're handed. It's not like, "This is who would be appropriate for you as a friend. This is the way you should act. This is the box we've already determined for you." Any kind of out-of-the-box way of living one's life or being surprised by a connection you feel to a human being, all those little happy accidents in life are the things I like to explore. To inspire people, not to just go through life in this sort of "this is what someone else had in mind for me, and I should follow that plan"—that feels very depressing to me. It's more interesting to open your heart and your life up to other experiences.
To explore relationships in that way makes the everyday more interesting and exciting.
Yeah, exactly. It gives you a reason to stick around.
Having been a guest of Marc's on his podcast twice, do you see any of his interviewer "persona" having an impact on the person you film on screen? Does training himself to listen and be present have any effect on making him a better screen partner?
Absolutely! The first time I directed Marc was on his TV show Maron, and I was so fascinated by his process. He's raw and a really natural actor. He steps in front of the camera, and he's looking at his scene partner and really knows how to listen and engage. A lot of that comes from sitting across from people and staring into their eyes. That's why he's such a good interviewer and has the top interview podcast, because he has a genuine conversation with people. And that's all acting really is too. He also has this weird ability to let the camera and crew and other extraneous details just fade away for him, and a lot of people find all that really distracting and difficult to shut out. He doesn't know where the camera is half the time. He said to me, "The next thing I want to do as an actor is figure out when the camera is on me." I said, "What?! That camera's right there!" He's like, "I don't see it. I'm not aware of it. I'm just in this scene with the person." I'm like, "That is a gift, my friend. That is incredible that you're able to not see the lights and craziness, just be in the scene." He's really able to do it. I think that definitely comes from that same skill set he's drawing on.
Where does the genesis of your films occur? They usually have some kind of strong conceptual selling point or hook, but they're often like a Trojan horse to get to deep conversations between the characters about something else.
It is, and the genesis of the vast majority of my films is an actor as a muse that I want to work with. Humpday was Mark Duplass, Outside In was his brother, Jay Duplass, this movie was Marc Maron, who I've been really wanting to make a movie with for three and a half years. Then there's other things, like a territory I want to explore or an element I want to return to, like improvisation, which I haven't done since Your Sister's Sister. I've done several movies in between that have been scripted, but I wanted to allow myself a new genre. I knew I wanted to laugh because the last movie was a drama, and I was ready to laugh—and let myself really laugh by going into the outlandish and ridiculous, plot-wise. Go into some comedy-caper territory, which I've never let myself do before. I've been totally real in every moment, and this time I was like, "What if I have real characters who go to a crazy place?" I wanted to make a culturally relevant movie that didn't make you want to slit your wrists. It referred to what was going on and some of the problematic elements of what we're dealing with in society. We're having this peak moment in conspiracy theories. They've always been around, but this is definitely where they've achieved a peak moment that I find very disturbing. So, it's usually a territory I want to explore and an actor I want to work with.
How do you research or prepare to authentically treat conspiracy culture?
Well, there's this thing called a computer and a thing called the internet, and boy, is it all in there! [laughs] We went down a rabbit hole with Mike O'Brien, my co-writer. It's so fascinating because there's little in-fighting. They really bonded over Pizzagate and the Twin Towers being an inside job, but then when it comes to hollow earth versus the earth is on fire, they're at odds and frenemies for life. It's insane, the shit you find.
How do you approach shooting improvisational dialogue? There's a very naturalistic feel to it, but there are hardly any vocal fillers like "um" or "you know."
Well, you get the right cast, so that really helps. I'll tell you, you can do a lot in the editing room. You'll see it on screen, there are these runs of incredible monologues. But if I'm cutting away to another actor for a reaction shot, it's often because I'm slicing out an "um" or an "ah" or a little bauble. The edit room is the most redemptive place in the universe. It's incredible what you can do and how you can carve out the right story. Especially with improvisation, it really is where the actual script is written. Our first cut—it didn't feel fat, it was funny throughout—was two and a half hours long. I was like, "How am I going to cut out five to seven minutes, much less an hour?" And for me, a comedy has to be 90 minutes, so I knew I needed an hour out of there. It was like, "This is hysterical, this is gold, but it's not serving the story. Ultimately, what is the story? It could be this, or it could include this, but let's just hone it down to Mel's emotional arc and make sure we can track it through the craziness." We want to care about these people just enough and balance it. There was so much work in the edit room.
Sword of Trust is definitely a comedy, but the scene I found most striking was Mel explaining his history to your character, Deidre, and in such a matter-of-fact, serious fashion, in the back of the truck. Did you always intend to set off this important part of the story with such a stark tonal contrast?
No, it wasn't. When Mike O'Brien really insisted that I be in the movie, I finally relented and thought I was going to be a random customer who came in for five seconds. But then, I realized she could be a device that helps us track Mel's arc. I was really panicking for a long time because I couldn't figure out how to make her funny. I can be comedic, but she wasn't comedic. She was so desperate and tragic. Then I finally realized that I wasn't going to worry about it. I wasn't going to try to turn her into some kind of laughing-stock. I was just going to be what she feels like she needs to be. That was an indication that this movie is going to have that real element of heaviness to it, but it happened really organically. I wanted you to care about these people, but I didn't realize there was going to be that much depth to one of them, so much poignant heart and humanity. That was a nice surprise.
You've described your writing process as being "upside-down," where the script develops alongside the characters. How did you develop this writing style?
I never went to traditional film school. I had this long, circuitous route to get to what I'm doing. I started as a theater actor, then I went to photography and started doing experimental work, but everything as a solo artist. The most important work of the film, making the process of the acting, is obstructed at every turn by the process of making it. You're out of order. In theater, you at least get to play a story from beginning to end and feel it out. You're at scene 35 on the first day and like, "What's happened before this? Where am I emotionally?" And then you've got to do it 40 times with the camera in different positions and act like nobody else is there. The whole thing is so hard, unless you're Meryl Streep! But if you're not working with Meryl Streep, what do you do as a director? I need real people on screen.
My second feature, My Effortless Brilliance, was a total experiment. I came up with these characters in my head and tried to cast them from a pretty small pool of actors. They were nothing like the characters. I realized, "What if you did it the other way? What if you had a person you wanted to work with…" That was where I started with that idea, and all I cared about was to make it feel like a documentary. I wanted you to turn the TV on and be like, "What am I watching? Am I in these people's lives?" And people have said they've had that experience where they'll turn it on in the middle of Showtime and have no idea what they're watching but that it feels like a documentary. Which is like, "Yes! That's what I meant."
And then I honed it with Humpday. Once I knew I could work in that way, I upped the stakes. I'll bring in a few lights. I had said, "No lights! Me and another camera operator with tiny cameras, a boom op, that's it." I eliminated the crew. But that was where I came up with that initial impulse, to make it feel really real. If the character fits the actor like a glove because it's half them or three-quarters them and they've developed it with me…I want real humans.
I actually had that experience of picking up one of your movies and not missing a beat. I was late to my showtime of Your Sister's Sister in the theater, but I didn't feel like I was lost. Then a few years later I watched it at home from the beginning, which helped it make a little more sense. But I felt I had easily intuited what I had missed.
It's funny because I want my movies to feel like you're paratrooping into somebody's life. We're taking a little journey down the river of their life for a while, and then we leave again. I don't like to tie things up too neatly at the end because I want you to get the sense that they're continuing to live their lives, and who knows what's going to happen in the future. But you just sort of paratrooped in a little bit later! [laughs]
On that note, there's a line toward the end of the film where Jillian Bell's character, Cynthia, takes a deep breath and says, "What a strange experience." Is that line improvised or scripted? In a lot of ways, the line feels like it sums up where characters often net out at the end of your films.
That was all improvised! It's all ordinary people going into crazy land, but yeah, ordinary people having weird dramas in their everyday lives. I mean, it can happen. I've heard stories of shit happening to random people that feel like…you couldn't write that shit!
Aaron Harvey is prone to pulling back from any moment that might give greater depth to his revenge tale.
Jake Cole
Photo: RLJE Films
Aaron Harvey's Into the Ashes is the latest in an increasing string of so-called country noirs set in the dilapidated backwoods of rural America, places ravaged by the opioid crisis and populated by jobless people long ago abandoned by politicians. It has little to distinguish itself, narratively or thematically, from similarly dour films, and it lets generic images of its rundown Alabama locale (rusted trucks, cramped houses, landlines in a wireless world) stand in as symbols of national decline without truly seeping into the complex social rot of the place. Its plot, of a reformed criminal forced to contend with his old gang leader over some stolen loot, is similarly superficial, hitting the typical beats of its genre.
Where Into the Ashes gets a boost is in its excellent cast of grizzled character actors, all of whom vibrantly express varying degrees of weariness and rage. Luke Grimes plays the erstwhile ne'er-do-well and ex-con Nick Brenner with the nervousness of a man who's just learning to let go of his past and give in to hope. The man's gruff, taciturn nature is leavened by his tender relationship with his wife, Tara (Marguerite Moreau), and he projects his faith in normalcy onto her. Nick relies so heavily on Tara for his emotional wellbeing that he anxiously calls home while on an overnight hunting trip just so he can hear her voice.
Equally human beneath a hard exterior is Nick's father-in-law, Frank (Robert Taylor), the local sheriff whose intimidating Tom Waits-esque voice and stiff demeanor belie his fumbling, masculine attempts to welcome Nick into his family. Strongest of all, though, is Frank Grillo as Sloan, Nick's recently paroled and vengeful boss. Grillo is at home playing big-fish-in-small-pond villains, and the actor makes the most of Sloan's thin characterization, exuding psychopathic menace when Sloan confronts Nick in the latter's home, drawing out every oblique threat as he circles the subject of the money that Nick stole from the crew's last job before Sloan was sent to prison. Grillo expertly inflects even the silliest moments of sub-Tarantino dialogue with a disarming venom, such as an extended riff on pie and ice cream.
But if the actors are primed to explore the contours around a basic premise, Henry constantly pulls back from any moment that might give greater depth to his revenge tale. Women exist to be supportive and to become victims, while character-driven conversations between Nick and Frank devolve into asinine ethics debates over justifiable violence. Worst of all, there's just no sense that the film is saying or revealing much of anything. There's one moment where Into the Ashes achieves a touch of bleak grace akin to the work of Cormac McCarthy by skipping over the events leading to a shootout and focusing only on its grisly aftermath: bodies strewn about in puddles of blood that look like reflective pools of black ice in the pale moonlight. Then, not five minutes later, we get a flashback showing the lead-up to that carnage. As with so much else in the film, a haunting moment of elision is negated by literal representation.
Cast: Luke Grimes, Frank Grillo, Marguerite Moreau, James Badge Dale, Robert Taylor, Brady Smith, Jeff Pope, Andrea Frankle Director: Aaron Harvey Screenwriter: Aaron Harvey Distributor: RLJE Films Running Time: 97 min Rating: NR Year: 2019
Review: Stéphane Brizé's At War Is Politically Charged but Artistically Inert
The film is content to bluntly affirm that corporate attempts at compassion are always secondary to providing profit to shareholders.
Jesse Cataldo
Photo: Cinema Libre Studio
Seven months after the first flare-up of France's Gilets Jaunes, the nascent populist movement shows no signs of ceasing. Combined with the country's ongoing Telecom scandal, in which several executives have been charged with "moral harassment" after 35 workers were allegedly hounded into committing suicide, it's evident that what's simmering there is an extension of the same unease escalating around much of Europe, and the world at large. It's a state of affairs that makes At War seem especially of the moment, and which leaves its eventual failure to offer any special insight so disappointing. Provided with a prime opportunity to animate the zeitgeist, Stéphane Brizé's labor-focused drama instead uses this timeliness to prod along the most obvious of points, its nuts-and-bolts, process-oriented approach never amounting to more than a surface look at the issues it purports to confront.
The film in some ways functions as an unofficial prelude to Brizé's prior The Measure of a Man, in which an unemployed machinist played by Vincent Lindon finds a new career as a hyper-market security guard, where he's eventually forced to choose between serving as a traitorous management lackey and losing his job. Here, Lindon's Laurent Amédéo is still in possession of his original occupation, though things are hanging by a thread, as a last-ditch organizing effort attempts to halt the closure of a manufacturing plant in Agen. Surrounded by a cast of convincing non-professionals, Laurent leads the picket line, refusing to waver from the straight and narrow, an intense figure of principle whose scruples are never in doubt.
At War is largely notable for its steadfast devotion to a kind of mechanistic aesthetic, which unfortunately lines up with its cheerless didacticism, the two qualities cohering in a scene-by-scene summation of a strike action that repeatedly hammers home the same general points. The scenes themselves evince heft, fluidity, and an impressive sense of improvisation, but the staging is static and the eventual outcome is always clear. The game is given away by Lindon's stoic face and the gradual unraveling of the plot, which envisions internal disintegration—leveraged by outside pressure—as the insidious method by which solidarity is smashed. Despite some genuine drama in this dissolution, it's always clear who's right and who's wrong, which material interests each is representing, and who's lying and who's telling the truth.
This didn't have to be the case, as proven by David France's procedure-focused documentary How to Survive a Plague, which balanced a similarly diagrammatic narrative with extensive character detail, expanding the stakes while affixing a deeper subtext about the ways the victory of a marginalized group eventually diminishes its radical standing. Intent on emphasizing the connections between callous corporate greed and populist unrest, Brizé's film is bluntly focused on the bottom line. There's a certain dramatic function to this technique, as it examines the individual human actions that allow such interests to put their will into practice, but it doesn't justify the flat, exhortative style of address.
As another example of how well this kind of economic criticism can be carried off, there are the dazzling docu-essays of German filmmaker Harun Farocki, who routinely found surprising intricacies in the cold façade of modern capitalism, while offering empathetic alignment with workers as a matter of course. At War, on the other hand, merely summarizes what its audience already knows, affirming that corporate attempts at compassion are always secondary to providing profit to shareholders, and that genuine humanity and integrity are liabilities when confronting such an unfeeling monolith. Like Ken Loach's recent Palme d'Or winner I, Daniel Blake, it's a film whose political principles are hard to disagree with, yet which leans so heavily on this moral certitude as to render itself entirely inert.
Cast: Vincent Lindon, Melanie Rover, Jacques Borderie, David Rey, Olivier Lemaire Director: Stéphane Brizé Screenwriter: Stéphane Brizé, Olivier Gorce Distributor: Cinema Libre Studio Running Time: 115 min Rating: NR Year: 2019
Review: Bottom of the 9th Strikes Out with Too Much Plot Incident
Raymond De Felitta's film offers a sampler course of formulas, which creates a strangely unfulfilling tension.
Photo: Saban Films
Raymond De Felitta's Bottom of the 9th offers a sampler course of formulas, which creates a strangely unfulfilling tension. Just when you expect the film to go in a certain direction, it goes in another, only for it to again switch routes, though there's never a sense of expectations being deliberately challenged or tweaked. Rather, the filmmakers merely seem to be indulging a variety of passing fancies, which is a shame because the actors here are game and occasionally imbue the shopworn scenes with liveliness.
Sonny Stano (Joe Manganiello) is the perfect hero for either a noir or a redemptive sports film, a man approaching middle age who just served a 19-year sentence for manslaughter. Famous in his Bronx neighborhood for being drafted by the Yankees, only to flush his life down the toilet, Sonny is attempting to patch his life together while doing a perpetual apology tour on behalf of friends and strangers alike. He's initially hired by an old friend, Joey (James Madio), to work in a fish market that seems to be a front for something. Joey has a cagey energy, and this narrative isn't without intrigue, but De Felitta and screenwriter Robert Bruzio unceremoniously lose sight of it in succumbing to a number of clichés.
Of course, Sonny is revealed to have a woman who got away, Angela (Sofia Vergara), who one day runs into her old beau at a market. They clearly have chemistry, as do the actors playing them, but their dialogue is composed of nothing but redemptive platitudes. In these scenes, Manganiello and Vergara are stuck in a worst-of-all-worlds situation. Their characters are relentlessly mousey, which is appropriate to the awkward context of Sonny and Angela's reunion, but which also robs these sexy actors of the opportunity to enjoy playing off one another. Meanwhile, said mousiness isn't poignant either, as the characters haven't been imagined beyond the respective stereotypes of the fallen man and jilted woman.
Bottom of the 9th then flirts with a narrative similar to that of Bull Durham and Major League, in which Sonny is hired by a local minor league ball team to rein in the fiery, egotistical talents of a rookie named Manny (Xavier Scott Evans). Evans is ferociously charismatic, suggesting a young Wesley Snipes and giving Manganiello a kinetic vibe to play off of, and so the film finally begins to come to life, with great character actors like Michael Rispoli and Burt Young riffing on the sidelines. However, this conceit is also left hanging, as the film shifts into a story of the unlikely comeback, with Sonny's own talents taking center ring.
De Felitta might've gotten by with these contrivances if he were a natural showman, but the filmmaker displays little interest in the Bronx setting in which his characters live, or in rendering their experiences in a fashion that refutes screenwriterly index-card portraiture. For instance, a prison flashback in which Sonny gets into a fight during a ball game is reduced to trite and melodramatic close-ups, while much of the remainder of the film is composed of medium shots designed to accentuate only the largely uninteresting dialogue. There's truly nothing in Bottom of the 9th but plot incident, and the leisurely, impersonal one-thing-after-another-ness of the film's construction is stifling.
Cast: Joe Manganiello, Sofía Vergara, Denis O'Hare, Burt Young, James Madio, Yancey Arias, Michael Rispoli, Vincent Pastore, Dominik García-Lorido, Michael Maize, Kevin William Paul Director: Raymond De Felitta Screenwriter: Robert Bruzio Distributor: Saban Films Running Time: 111 min Rating: R Year: 2019
The film is more straight-faced than Alexandre Aja's prior work, trading absurd kills for narrow escapes from gaping alligator jaws.
Steven Scaife
Photo: Paramount Pictures
Unlike the giddily crass Piranha 3D, Alexandre Aja's Crawl is a quiet beast of a film. It's built not on a foundation of over-the-top gore, but on a series of escalations. As a hurricane barrels toward Florida, ace swimmer Haley (Kaya Scodelario) becomes worried after her father, Dave (Barry Pepper), doesn't return her phone calls. She travels to her old family home and finds him unconscious in the house's flooded crawl space, with large alligators swimming in the water.
Early on, the camera often lingers on the deceptive stillness of the rising water for maximum suspense. Haley and her father are trapped in the house with no more than the tools they can find or already have on hand, MacGyvering their very survival out of shovels, flashlights, and flares. The best parts of the film slyly set up those tools and other objects, including a swing set and a rat trap, only to bring them back at some later, climactic moment.
If Crawl, then, is an easily digestible piece of workmanlike thrills, its only real bit of gristle is its po-faced father-daughter bonding. Haley and Dave are somewhat estranged; the family home was meant to have been sold off after Dave's recent divorce from Haley's mother; and flashbacks to childhood swim meets show father and daughter tempting fate with flagrantly ironic use of the term "apex predator." In the face of certain death, they cobble their relationship back together through Hallmark-card platitudes while sentimental music plays on the film's soundtrack. It's the absolute thinnest of familial drama, and it will do little to redirect your emotional investment away from the survival of the family dog.
Between these family moments, of course, the flood waters run red as people get got by gators. Aja is prone to lingering in prolonged closeup on things like a protruding bone being shoved back into place, but he otherwise seems to have gotten the most inspired bits of underwater violence out of his system with Piranha 3D. Crawl is more straight-faced than his prior work, trading absurd kills for narrow escapes from gaping alligator jaws. And while these moments are suspenseful, with nail-biting scrapes involving a handgun, some loose pipes, and one particularly clever shower-door maneuver, there's precious little of the go-for-broke invention or outrageousness that might have made the film more than a fun and economical thriller.
Cast: Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper, Ross Anderson, Morfydd Clark Director: Alexandre Aja Screenwriter: Michael Rasmussen, Shawn Rasmussen Distributor: Paramount Pictures Running Time: 87 min Rating: R Year: 2019
Review: The Farewell Thoughtfully Braids the Somber and the Absurd
The film taps into universal truths about the passage of time, the inevitability of loss, and how we prepare one another for it.
Pat Brown
Photo: A24
In the opening scene of writer-director Lulu Wang's The Farewell, a Chinese grandmother (Zhao Shuzhen), affectionately referred to as Nai Nai by her family, and her Chinese-American granddaughter, Billi (Awkwafina), have a warm, affectionate phone conversation in which each woman incessantly lies to the other. A professionally adrift, financially bereft millennial whose writing ambitions have come to naught, Billi lets her grandmother believe her life is busy and full of social engagements; for her part, Nai Nai insists that she's at her sister's house, rather than in a drably decorated doctor's office. Wang frames Nai Nai against the kitschy, oversized picture of a lagoon that hangs on the wall, as if to emphasize the flimsiness of the illusions the pair is painting for one another.
The sequence calls to mind the advantage of audio-only phone calls: for allowing us to more easily maintain the falsehoods that comprise a not insignificant portion of our relationships. Given that minor mistruths prop up our most basic social connections, Wang focuses The Farewell on the moral quandary of whether a big lie—specifically, culturally contingent situations—might actually be an expression of genuine love. The film takes up the question with a tone of melancholic drollery, a sense of irony that doesn't lose touch with the human feelings at its core. The Farewell is "based on an actual lie," evidently an episode from Wang's life, and its careful mixture of the somber and the absurd rings true to life.
As it turns out, Nai Nai has terminal lung cancer, but Billi's father's family elects to lie to the woman about her MRI results, an action that's evidently within the bounds of Chinese law. But as Billi's assimilated immigrant father, Haiyan (Tzi Ma), points out to his brother, Haibin (Jiang Yongbo), during a crisis of conscience, such a thing is both frowned upon in America and prosecutable. Struggling even more with the decision, of course, is the more Americanized Billi, who can't reconcile her Western notions of love and the sanctity of the individual with the widespread practice of lying to family members about their impending deaths.
To create a cover for a family visit to Beijing, the family forces Billi's cousin, Hao Hao (Chen Hanwei), who lives in Japan, to marry his girlfriend, Aiko (Aoi Mizuhara), of three months. This plan provides plenty of fodder for Wang's dry humor, as the family attempts to maintain the veneer of celebration while also bidding farewell to their ostensibly clueless matriarch, who's confused by Hao Hao and Aiko's lack of affection and the generally dour mood that predominates in the lead-up to the wedding. It's potential material for a farce, but even in its funny moments, Wang's film is contemplative rather than frenetic, preferring to hold shots as her characters gradually, often comically adjust to the reality that Nai Nai will soon be gone.
Awkwafina, hitherto notable mostly for her comic supporting roles, gives a revelatory lead performance as Billi, the thirtysomething prone to bouts of adolescent sullenness. Perhaps playing a Bushwick-based, first-generation-American creative type isn't much of a stretch for the Queens-born rapper/actress, but she immediately brings to the role the depth of lived experience: We believe from the first frames in the long-distance love between Billi and her grandmother, and the existential crisis the young woman feels as she negotiates two cultures' differing approaches to death and disease. In taking us to Beijing through Billi's eyes, which are often blinking back tears as she says goodbye without articulating "goodbye," The Farewell's morose but not hopeless comedy taps into universal truths about the passage of time, the inevitability of loss, and how we prepare one another for it.
Cast: Awkwafina, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin, Zhao Shuzhen, Lu Hong, Jiang Yongbo, Chen Hanwei Director: Lulu Wang Screenwriter: Lulu Wang Distributor: A24 Running Time: 98 min Rating: PG Year: 2018
This ostentatiously expensive remake is reliant on our memory of the original to accentuate every significant moment.
Photo: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
It's somewhat paradoxical to critique Disney's recent series of "live-action" remakes for precisely repeating the narratives, emotional cues, shot sequences, and soundscapes of their earlier animated versions. More than young children, who might well be content watching the story in vibrant 2D, it's the parents who are the target audience of this new take on The Lion King, which aims to light up adults' nostalgia neurons. In this sense, Jon Favreau's film achieves its goals, running through a text beloved by an entire generation almost line for line, and shot for shot—with some scenes extended to reach the two hours seemingly required of Hollywood tentpoles. Throughout, though, one gets the impression that there's something very cheap at the core of this overtly, ostentatiously expensive film, reliant as it is on our memory of the original to accentuate every significant moment.
The new film differs from its source in simulating a realistic African savannah and wildlife through digital animation and compositing, but it doesn't provide anything resembling a genuinely new idea, visually or dramatically. Favreau meticulously recreates the framing and montage of 1994's The Lion King as he runs through the unaltered storyline. The young lion prince Simba (voiced as a cub by JD McCrary and as a grown lion by Donald Glover) witnesses his father Mufasa's (James Earl Jones) seemingly accidental death by stampede. Unknown to Simba, his uncle, Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor), murdered his own brother, but the jealous would-be heir manipulates the rambunctious young lion into accepting the blame for his father's death. In self-exile, Simba represses his guilt by adopting the carefree philosophy of meercat Timon (Billy Eichner) and warthog Pumbaa (Seth Rogen), until his long-lost betrothed, Nala (Beyoncé Knowles-Carter), happens across him and convinces him to return to reclaim his throne.
The film's world, as conceived by Favreau's camera and an army of CG animators, is far less expressive than the one Disney's original artists created in 1994. Tied to the idea of recompositing a reality, the filmmakers take less license in making the elephant graveyard where malicious hyenas Shenzi (Florence Kasumba), Azizi (Eric André), and Kamari (Keegan-Michael Key) live a fantastical, nightmarish terrain, and they constrain the choreography of the animals during Simba's performance of "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" to the bounds of actual animal physiology. Such musical sequences suffer under the regime of realism: Scar's villainous exposition song, "Be Prepared," appears in a truncated version spoken more than sung by Ejiofor, effectively robbing the original song of its devious exuberance.
The characters' faces are also less pliable, less anthropomorphized—their demeanor harder to read—than in the traditional animation format of the original film. This isn't necessarily a hindrance to crafting an affecting story (see Chris Noonan's Babe), but the closeness with which Favreau hews to the original film means that the moments crafted for the earlier medium don't quite land in this one. Scar isn't nearly so menacing when he's simply a gaunt lion with a scar, and Nala and Simba's reunion isn't as meaningful when their features can't soften in humanlike fashion when they recognize each other. The Lion King invites—indeed, attempts to feed off of—reference to the original but consistently pales in comparison.
There's another important difference one feels lurking in the margins of this film. The attitude of the first Lion King toward nature approached something like deference. The original film isn't flawless: In its depiction of a patrilineal kingdom being saved from a usurper and his army of lazy serfs by the rightful heir, it questionably projected human politics into a nonhuman world. But it was an ambitious project by the then comparatively modest Walt Disney Studios to craft an expressive, living portrait of the animal kingdom. In contrast, there's a hubristic quality to this CG-infused remake, as if Disney is demonstrating that its digitally fabricated imagery can fully capture the reality of a healthy, autonomous animal world—at a historical moment when that world is in danger of being totally snuffed out by the human race's endless cycles of production and reproduction. The subject of this tiresome retread is ultimately less the "circle of life" and more the circle of consumption.
Cast: Donald Glover, James Earl Jones, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alfre Woodard, Billy Eichner, Seth Rogen, Keegan-Michael Key, Eric André, John Kani, JD McCrary, John Oliver Director: Jon Favreau Screenwriter: Jeff Nathanson, Brenda Chapman Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Running Time: 118 min Rating: PG Year: 2019 Buy: Soundtrack
Our preview section is your best, most complete guide for all the films, big and small, coming your way soon

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Aleksandar "Aco" Živković (Orašje, 25. travnja 1912. – Zagreb, 22. travnja 2000.), hrvatski nogometni reprezentativac.

Igračka karijera

Klupska karijera
Visok, vitak, prodoran, vrhunski tehničar elegantnih pokreta i sjajan strijelac, veliki ljubimac navijača, proslavljeni igrač Građanskog i jedan od najboljih zagrebačkih i jugoslavenskih nogometaša između dva svjetska rata karijeru je započeo u zagrebačkoj Concordiji za koju je igrao do 19. godine i s njom osvojio prvenstvo države 1930. godine. Nakon toga odlazi u švicarski Grasshopper s kojim je osvojio švicarski nacionalni kup. Od 1932. do 1935. vraća se u Hrvatsku i u prvom navratu nastupa za zagrebački Građanski, u kojeg se ponovo vraća 1939., gdje 1941. i završava nogometnu karijeru. U međuvremenu je od 1935. do 1939. nastupao za francuske klubove Racing Club de Paris, CA Paris i FC Sochaux-Montbéliard.

Reprezentativna karijera
Za jugoslavensku reprezentaciju odigrao je 15 utakmica i polučio 15 zgoditaka.
Debitirao je u državnom sastavu 2. kolovoza 1931. protiv Čehoslovačke (2:1) u Beogradu i već u prvom nastupu postigao pogodak legendarnom vrataru Františeku Plánički. Godine 1932. bio je najbolji strijelac Balkanskog kupa s 5 zgoditaka.

Aleksandar Živković jedan je od hrvatskih nogometaša pozvanih u jugoslavensku reprezentaciju za prvo svjetsko nogometno prvenstvo u Urugvaju 1930., koji je bojkotirao taj poziv u znak prosvjeda zbog preseljenja Jugoslavenskog nogometnog saveza iz Zagreba u Beograd.

Za hrvatsku reprezentaciju odigrao je samo jednu utakmicu 8. prosinca 1940. u Zagrebu protiv Mađarske (1:1).

Nastupio je i pet puta za reprezentaciju zagrebačkog nogometnog podsaveza.

Diplomacija
Tijekom Drugog svjetskog rata radio je u diplomaciji NDH u Berlinu i Bukureštu, a nakon 1945. seli u Južnoafričku Republiku gdje je živio do 1993. godine kada se vraća u Zagreb gdje je umro 22. travnja 2000. godine.

Izvori

Hrvatski nogometni reprezentativci 1940.-1956.
Nogometaši 1. HŠK Građanskog Zagreb
Jugoslavenski nogometni reprezentativci
Zagrebački nogometni reprezentativci

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Just thought id share with you my new hobby,lol. Ive started making baby hair bands, inspired by the amount of hair Ruby has and the lack of shops that sell hair bands. have a look and let me know what you think and have a bid if you fancy one.


text:
Q: Multiple Threads to process files in python I am trying to process some files using python, however as file number is huge it's taking too much time. I am trying to create multiple threads and wants to execute this thing in parallel to cut down some time. However not sure exactly how to do it.
I have write the following code which is suppose to execute 10 files in parallel, but it seems like rather than creating 10 threads it's creating 100 threads, one for each file.
    def setup_logging():
    log_formatter = logging.Formatter('%(asctime)s [%(threadName)s] [%(levelname)s] %(message)s')
    root_logger = logging.getLogger()

    file_handler = logging.FileHandler("./logs.log")
    file_handler.setFormatter(log_formatter)
    root_logger.addHandler(file_handler)

    console_handler = logging.StreamHandler()
    console_handler.setFormatter(log_formatter)
    root_logger.addHandler(console_handler)
    root_logger.level = logging.DEBUG

def print_file_name(name):
    logging.info(name)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    setup_logging()
    logging.info("hi")

    dir_name = "/home/egnyte/demo/100"
    file_list = os.listdir(dir_name)
    threads = []
    import threading
    for i in range(0, len(file_list), 10):
        for index in range(0, 10, 1):
            t = threading.Thread(target=print_file_name, args=(file_list[i+index],))
            threads.append(t)
            t.start()

        for t in threads:
            t.join()

Now the problem is, in logs I am able to see following lines, which makes me think it's creating more than 10 thread, actually 1 for every file. And that's not what I want.
2017-03-30 13:16:46,120 [Thread-9] [INFO] demo_69.txt
2017-03-30 13:16:46,120 [Thread-10] [INFO] demo_45.txt
2017-03-30 13:16:46,121 [Thread-11] [INFO] demo_72.txt
2017-03-30 13:16:46,121 [Thread-12] [INFO] demo_10.txt
...
...
2017-03-30 13:16:46,149 [Thread-98] [INFO] demo_29.txt
2017-03-30 13:16:46,150 [Thread-99] [INFO] demo_27.txt
2017-03-30 13:16:46,150 [Thread-100] [INFO] demo_39.txt

I tried using multi process as well, however seems like it's not creating any thread, all the file name are being printed using main thread only.
pool = multiprocessing.Pool(processes=10)
result_list = pool.map(print_file_name, (file for file in os.listdir(dir_name)))

A: You are creating a thread for each file:
for i in range(0, len(file_list), 10):
    for index in range(0, 10, 1):
        t = threading.Thread(target=print_file_name, args=(file_list[i+index],))
        threads.append(t)
        t.start()

(Note: you should use for file in file_list to loop through the file list)
Would using a thread pool as in the following Answer be a better solution:
parallel file parsing, multiple CPU cores

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Fujifilm today went on a binge of announcements, mostly centered on the new X-E3 camera, an update of the X-E2/X-E2s.
The X-E3 brings Fujifilm's latest technologies to the E body: 24mp X-Trans sensor, 4K video, Bluetooth connectivity, touchscreen, and phase detect autofocus on the sensor. You also get the focus position joystick that premiered with the X-Pro2.
Overall, the X-E3 takes a bit of volume and weight away from its predecessor, keeping it more clearly in the compact and light category in the Fujifilm lineup. The rangefinder style EVF got a few tweaks, including a different eye point and magnification than the preceding model. In many ways, the X-E3 may now be a slightly better choice than the X-T20, adding some additional focus controls and Bluetooth while sacrificing the built-in flash (the X-E3 comes with a small external flash).
Body only is US$899, unfortunately a step up.
Along with the X-E3, Fujifilm had a torrent of other things to talk about, including the new 80mm f/2.8 Macro for the X mount, the 45mm f/2.8 for the GF mount, new firmware updates pre-announced for the X-Pro2, X-T2, X100F, and X-T20, a new lens roadmap, and a new Fujifilm X RAW Studio software program that is sort of weird (it requires the camera hooked to the computer, as the actual raw demosaic is done by the camera's imaging ASIC chip, not the computer).
Overall, Fujifilm continues to be quite active in releasing mirrorless products and then refreshing them with firmware updates. At present count the APS-C lineup consists of six current bodies and 22 lenses, plus a small medium format body with five available lenses (soon to be six).


What comic are you reading at the moment? - Horror.com Forums - Talk about horror.
What comic are you reading at the moment?
anyway...I just completed Batman/Aliens 1 & 2. Apart from the fantastic artwork, the storyline is basically a blend of Aliens and Alien vs Predator...which isnt that great.
Some of the alien hybrids are great...***spoiler*** like the one born out of a croc...otherwise its decent.
I picked up The Exterminators Volume 2 yesterday, it's pretty awesome.
Bits of the OMAC project mini-series under Infinity.
The Goon Volume 5: Wicked Inclinations.
I just finished Astonishing X-Men volume one, and I'm re-reading my Ultimate Fantastic Four Comics.
Batman - Elseworlds vampire trilogy.
Thoroughly enjoyable...although they could have done without #3 Crimson Mist.
I just finished Ultimate X-Men Volume 2: Return To Weapon X.
A couple stories from The Goon: Noir.
I'm reading through The Dark Knight Returns right now, it's pretty damn good.


Below are a selection of photographs taken from the Midland Railway Society collection. If you feel you have anything to add to the captions, or that we have got our facts wrong, then please email webmaster@midlandrailwaysociety.org.uk with your comments.
Guiseley station was situated on the Apperley Junction to Otley and Ilkley line (officially known as the Otley and Ilkley Extension line). An up stopping passenger train is entering the station with a horse box behind the locomotive headed by a Johnson 2–4–0 in re-built condition with Deeley chimney and smokebox door. In addition to over 30 Midland Railway train services per day in 1909, the line through Guiseley was also used by ten North Eastern passenger trains between Bradford (Market St.) and Harrogate via the circuitous route through Otley, Arthington and Pannal.
Guiseley station was opened on August 1st 1865 and was situated at the summit of the line at 443 feet above sea level. Trains faced a three-mile climb on either side with the ascent from Apperley junction being particularly steep at 1 in 60 for much of this section. The photograph is taken looking north with the new signal box, which was brought into use on March 18th 1906, situated on the down platform. A wooden station building is sited on the up platform and a typical Midland Railway footbridge dominates the scene.
Guiseley acted as a focal point for goods services serving the Yeadon branch which diverged from the main line 43 chains to the south at Rawdon Junction.
Your caption states that this station was the focal point for the Yeadon branch. Although I don't dispute that it was the junction station for the Yeadon Branch, I would say that the focal point was the operating arrangements. It was where the Bradford and Leeds Down trains met and stock was exchanged for onward working to Ilkley and Otley, both trains sometimes having Ilkley and Otley portions, and vice versa for Up trains - the stations being in an 'X layout' with Guiseley at the crossing of the arms.
Due to this there were extension platforms and sidings to both platforms. This is an arrangement I haven't seen anywhere else in Britain - but could be wrong! Full details are in 'The Railways of Wharfedale' by Peter E Baughan pub. D & C. Text p.134 & 136–7, Sketch Map p.135 and Appendix 4a & b.
Heysham Harbour circa 1905 showing the extensive goods facilities constructed to deal with traffic from Northern Ireland. On the far left is the power station that provided electricity used to drive the cranes and other equipment at the harbour.
Luffenham station on the Syston and Peterborough line looking towards junction with the LNWR line to Seaton Junction. The station opened for passenger traffic on May 1st 1848 while the junction with the LNWR was brought into use on June 2nd 1851. The LNWR possessed running powers over the Midland between Luffenham and Stamford for all traffic. On the far left is the exit from the up lie-by with the two running lines in the centre. Luffenham Junction signal box stands at the far end of the up platform. On the right is the `down platform line' with the main station building and a water crane. An impressive array of signals controls the junction and level crossing and a train is signalled into the down platform.
The line through Luffenham was an important Midland artery for both passenger and goods traffic to and from the eastern counties. The main traffic was a procession of eastbound coal trains destined initially for Peterborough: for example in 1909 there were 21 of these in each 24-hour period, mainly during the evening and night. They originated from a wide variety of locations such as Coalville, Kirkby, Hasland, Toton, Stockingford and Tibshelf. In the down direction daily goods trains for Peterborough originated from Derby, Leicester and Wigston.
Masborough and Rotherham station circa 1900 with a Johnson 2–4–0 on an up passenger train. The station was re-named Rotherham (Masborough Station) on April 1st 1908. The signal on the down platform indicates that the train is routed round the curve to Holmes Junction and Sheffield.


Be prepared to make this major life decision. Don't leave it to chance.
20+ Questions to ask prospective villages.
Questions you might never have thought to ask before signing your contract.
Day to day management questions, as well as legal issues and practical considerations.
Easy to use checklist allows you to mark off the questions as they are answered.
Don't make a decision about villages until you've considered these important questions.


Single Duvet Cover Size. FUN ANIMAL SINGLE DUVET COVERS DOGS ELEPHANT GIRAFFE ORANGUTAN Intended For Single Duvet Cover Size Design 14. Duvet Cover Sizes Single Size Us Theundream Me Within Idea 13. Size Kids Reversible Bedding Duvet Cover Set Police Fire Ambulance Pertaining To Single Plans 2. USA Europe Size Bedding Sets Flamingo Duvet Cover Set Single King With Regard To Inspirations 17. Wongsbedding Batman Bedding Set Black Color Cartoon Duvet Cover In Single Size Decor 8. Rainbow Color Stripes Boys Bedding Set For Single Double Bedflat Duvet Cover Size Prepare 6. High Count Density Cotton Duvet Covers Set Black Bedding In Single Cover Size Prepare 4.
Luxury Butterfly Queen King Size Bedding Sets Pink Quilt Duvet Pertaining To Single Cover Prepare 1. Mini Hares Rabbits Bunny Print Duvet Cover Size Single Double With Regard To Decor 15. Rainbow Color Stripes Boys Bedding Set For Single Double Bedflat Pertaining To Duvet Cover Size Prepare 19. Duvet Covers Single Double King Size Next Within Cover Decorations 5. Duvet Sizes Uk Top And Best Design Ideas Regarding Single Cover Size Decorations 0.


text:
Q: Merge Two python Lists with a condition I have two list Activities and Projects. I want to merge them such that I will be able to loop over the merged list. So now the merged list Appication but I want to merge them in such a way that I will be able to loop through it and check if it's activities or projects and then choose it's fields. How do I do that?
Activities

[{'status': 'Applied','activity_name': 'Aasd','duration_days': 15,
  'time_commitment': 10},{'status': 'Applied','activity_name': 'Marathon', 'duration_days': 3,'time_commitment': 3}]

Projects
[{'application_status': '101','chezuba_project': '4','picture': 'projectimage-04.jpg','duration': 4,'time_commitment': 6},{'application_status': '103','chezuba_project': '2','picture': 'projectimage-04.jpg','duration': 3,'time_commitment': 2}]

Applications = Activities + Projects
['acitivities':[{'status': 'Applied','activity_name': 'Aasd','duration_days': 15,'time_commitment': 10},{'status': 'Applied','activity_name': 'Marathon', 'duration_days': 3,'time_commitment': 3}]
 {'application_status': '101','chezuba_project': '4','picture': 'projectimage-04.jpg','duration': 4,'time_commitment': 6}],
'projects':[{'application_status': '101','chezuba_project': '4','picture': 'projectimage-04.jpg','duration': 4,'time_commitment': 6},{'application_status': '103','chezuba_project': '2','picture': 'projectimage-04.jpg','duration': 3,'time_commitment': 2}]

A: You could turn your Activity and Project dictionaries into dataclasses, and then use isinstance(item, Activity) while looping over items in the Applications list.
In general, dictionaries for such applications are okay, but sooner or later it's nice be able to use the full object-oriented power of Python.
I assume that your frappe tag isn't really relevant here, by the way. If you really need this specific dictionary format for some other use, you could always write .as_dict() methods for your classes.

A: You can add any indicator you want. I'll demonstrate modifying the dictionary as an indicator by adding the field type to both list:
Applications = []
Applications += [{"type": "activity", **d} for d in Activities]
Applications += [{"type": "project", **d} for d in Projects]

Then you can filter based on the type key
>>> print(Applications)
[{'type': 'activity',
  'status': 'Applied',
  'activity_name': 'Aasd',
  'duration_days': 15,
  'time_commitment': 10},
 {'type': 'project',
  'application_status': '101',
  'chezuba_project': '4',
  'picture': 'projectimage-04.jpg',
  'duration': 4,
  'time_commitment': 6}]

>>> print([d in Applications if d["type"] == "activity"])
[{'type': "activity',
  'status': 'Applied',
  'activity_name': 'Aasd',
  'duration_days': 15,
  'time_commitment': 10},
]

A: here is a sample that uses a combination of unpacking of objects and assigning a label/classification and merging them into a single array.
activities = []
projects = []
items = []

items.extend([{**a, 'label': "activity", } for a in activities])
items.extend([{**p, 'label': "project", } for p in projects])

print(items)
# prints [{'status': 'Applied', 'activity_name': 'Aasd', 'duration_days': 15, 'time_commitment': 10, 'label': 'activity'}, {'application_status': '101', 'chezuba_project': '4', 'picture': 'projectimage-04.jpg', 'duration': 4, 'time_commitment': 6, 'label': 'projects'}]


We introduced 30s Charleston in the first lesson, and we think it's good to review it again after you have been through the other moves.
Simon and Natasya show 30s Charleston, Kick-Through Charleston and hand-2-hand Charleston.
In this video you will find the Kick-Through Charleston and the hand 2 hand Charleston.
While practicing all the steps in the video, make sure that you are always bouncing on every beat. Think of it like skipping rope: there is a mini jump (bounce) happening on each count.


text:
Home / Racing / BMW tests new iFE.18 Formula E car at Calafat…
BMW tests new iFE.18 Formula E car at Calafat (ESP)
Racing | April 20th, 2018 by Horatiu Boeriu	0
BMW continues its preparations for the Formula E championship with a new test of its iFE.18 racing car. The car is equipped with a drivetrain …
BMW continues its preparations for the Formula E championship with a new test of its iFE.18 racing car. The car is equipped with a drivetrain developed solely by BMW and will compete in the ABB FIA Formula E Championship in Season 5 when BMW joins the first series for fully-electric racing cars as an official manufacturer. Bruno Spengler (CAN) was at the wheel of the BMW iFE.18 at the 3.250-kilometre circuit, which is located on the Mediterranean coast. The 2012 DTM champion completed a comprehensive testing program.
Bruno Spengler (BMW works driver): "The test with the BMW iFE.18 was a very positive one. We spent a lot of time on track. When we did come across any issues, they were solved relatively quickly. In a project as new as this one, the initial tests are primarily about gaining experience. We did that and completed the majority of our test program. For me, as a driver, it is very special to be involved here from the word go. Working on the development of a new car is a unique task."
The new BMW drivetrain is the heart of the BMW iFE.18. The future common chassis for Formula E was first presented in early March at the International Motor Show in Geneva. Some impressive comparison figures provide the most compelling evidence of the performance increases that the new system generates for Formula E, compared to the production engine in the BMW i3. The race machine is 50 percent lighter, 66 percent more compact and produces 100 percent more performance. It even reaches revs 400 percent higher than its production counterpart.
BMW is expected to introduce the final livery and the car sometimes in September 2018.
BMW Formula EFormula EiFE.18
Previous post Video: How the BMW i8 Used in Coachella Took Shape
Next post Top Gear drives the ALPINA D5 S
BMW i Andretti Motorsport finishes third and fourth in New York
The BMW i Andretti Motorsport team enjoyed a successful New York City E-Prix on Saturday. António Félix da Costa (POR), in the #28 BMW iFE.18, …
BMW i Andretti Motorsport misses out on the points at the Swiss E-Prix
BMW i Andretti Motorsport was unable to back up the strong performances last time out at the team's home race in Berlin (GER) as the …
Video: BMW i8 Roadster Safety Car Races Against Yacht in Monaco
The Formula E championship got a new Safety Car at the Monaco E-Prix last month. Once again, the car that steps in on the track whenever …
BMW i Andretti Motorsport finished in the points at Berlin ePrix
BMW i Andretti Motorsport finished in the points with both its drivers for the first time this season in race ten of the ABB FIA …


text:
Boy Azooga / Buzzard 12″
BWR037 (LP)
Vinyl comes with digital download of BUZZARD TRACKS ONLY.
Boy Azooga and Buzzard's first official release will be an exclusive vinyl-only split EP, released by Bubblewrap Collective in collaboration with Rat Trap Records. The vinyl comes in transparent green with black and green splatters and limited to 250 copies. The artwork is by Craig Shankland and Carlota Nobrega.
SKU: BWR037 Categories: Artist, Boy Azooga, Buzzard, EP, Product, Vinyl
Boy Azooga is the project of Cardiff-born Davey Newington. While playing under the pseudonym 'Bongo Fury' in Charlotte Church's Late Night Pop Dungeon alongside other Cardiff bands such as Keys and Monico Blonde, Davey began writing his own material, later recording at his mate Dr. Ed Boogie's house. Though constructing the music's multifaceted layers himself, on the live front he recruited friends Daf Evans, Dylan Morgan and Sam Barnes to form the four-headed, instrument-swapping psychedelic-dance-rock outfit now known as Boy Azooga.
Their songs brim with love for a diverse suite of musical history, with touchstones of The Beach Boys, Sly And The Family Stone, Caribou, Black Sabbath, William Onyeabor, King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard, Beastie Boys, Can, Outkast, The Go! Team, Van McCoy, Ty Segal and many more.
Catch them live at your next opportunity. In return, they'll give you a maraca to shake.
Buzzard started as a studio project by Tibet bassist and multi-instrumentalist Tom Rees. After being particularly inspired by Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky", Tom had the idea to dedicate a project entirely to the sound of mid-70's rock records. Within this he'd use only minimalist recording techniques in an attempt to recreate the sounds of Cream, John Lennon and Supertramp.
Shortly after the release of Buzzard's first single 'In Vain', the project quickly evolved into a fully fledged band with members Eddie Rees, Zac White (FUR, Lily And White) and Ethan Hurst (Brothers, Tibet). With an expansive sound mirroring their intent, their collection of tracks explore weighty concepts of time, money, politics and vanity while leading the listener merrily into a dream-pop valhalla, from which there is no escape.
Eugene Capper & Rhodri Brooks – Pontvane
Quodega – The Meanderlux Vessel


text:
Q: Low performance with Chrome, but not other browsers I have an performance issue with P5.js when rendered in Chrome, but not other browsers. I get around 10-15 fps in Chrome, even when tested with a simple moving ellipse. I've tried restarting my computer, doing a clean install of Chrome, updating the libraries, but nothing worked. When performing, my CPU usage goes up quite a bit (2.5 Ghz i7) to around 50% usage. Chrome dev tools doesn't really help either, showing "program" being the culprit for CPU usage.
The weirdest thing is that a couple weeks ago, everything waas going smooth and no problem was ever encountered.
Thus I wondered if any of you guys ever had such an issue or knows what's going on. Thanks!
Edit: Here's the simple a simple testing code that runs very poorly on my machine.

function setup() {
    createCanvas(windowWidth,windowHeight);
    }

    let a = 0;
    let b = 0;

    function draw() {
       background(0);
       fill(255);
       ellipse(a,b,200);
       a += 1;
       b += 1;
    }


This crocheted dress with scallops tumbling down the skirt has a cute little flower on one shoulder and a tulle sash. Instructions for the tulle under skirt are also provided in this 8 page PDF crochet pattern.
A note about size: This dress is designed to fit Disney Animator dolls that are 16" tall with a 9 1/2" waist and an 8" chest.
What You Get: One 8 page crochet pattern that you digitally download as a PDF file so you can start your project immediately! The PDF crochet pattern provides full color step-by-step illustrated instructions. A PDF reader is required to view and print the files (example: Adobe Reader or Preview for MAC). The download link is received immediately after the transaction is complete. Print copies are NOT available.
Nice pattern, it was easy to follow, the dress fit well.
easy crochet and a beautiful dress!
This was fun. I had the pleasure of crocheting the Animator and American Girl Tumbling Scallops dresses before publication. The instructions are good, bodice fits well. Wild party or Sunday best, have fun pairing the underskirt with the yarn.


But with more troops serving and staying longer in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's not surprising they come home carrying more baggage. Some are even bringing the violence home with them. Earlier this month, the New York Times revealed that 121 veterans of the two current wars have been charged with murder on U.S. soil. Many of the cases have been easily traced back to combat trauma and the stress of deployment. It goes to show that the aftermath of war is never confined to the war zone; it always hits home.