Selected Scenes: Game of Thrones 806

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it all would come down to what jon decided to do. it was his choice. becoming lord commander was not something he asked for, neither was defacto leader of the wildlings. now, on top of everything, the last male targaryen heir to the iron throne? he didnt ask for any of it. fate was thrust upon him at every turn and when finally faced with a choice that only he could make, he decided to take tyrions advice and act quickly and swiftly, just like when he hung his predecessor to lord commander and his conspirators. jon had never been afraid or reluctant to duel out justice when it was called for, but he has been a reluctant leader. a brave fighter but a humble diplomat. he allowed himself to love again after ygritte and not only did the woman turn out to be his sister but another tyrant leader and threat to his family. a threat to his crown! he was the only one who could kill daenerys but did he ever imagine in a million years that he would end up where he began? being sent back to the nights watch, exiled from westeros with his secrets intact. maybe he thought that it would turn out differently, just a little glimmer in the back of his mind that lured him with the thought of being king, all he had to do was do what he had always done, which were the needs of the many over the needs of the one.

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Selected Scenes: The Apostle

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sonny is as devout as southern ministers come. once a prominent revivalist preacher with his own congregation and the ideal life, it all seems to come crashing down on him: his wife is having an affair; his church votes to remove him; and his previously unspoken alcoholism and temperament get the better of him and force him on the run from the police. however, through his ordeal his faith never wavers. he is congruent and admits to his mistakes. he feels his only way out is to atone and to be reborn. after self baptizing he is resurrected as “the apostle EF” (his first and middle initials) and finds the salvation he is looking for when a small town devoid of a place of worship follow him.

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The Dream Diary: September 2016

we seek refuge in a confessional. on the internet you can be anybody you want to be. write with a pseudonym. be the racist young pornographer you can’t when you’re sixty and work the nine-to-five-am at mcdonalds. i’m twenty eight and it feels like i’m sixty sometimes, working the daily grind. can’t retire early. have to keep going. but i’m not sixty. and that naked maturity and illusion of experience betrays my own nature sometimes. i am a scared, wily man with the same issues that everyone else has. they are compounded as my own. everyones’ are. and it is in that selfish grey area where ignorance resides.

i’d like to think i’m not an ignorant person, only because of how strongly that word has been dissected in present day discussion. it is ignorant to assume anything about anyone without knowing them first. it is ignorant to have an opinion on something you know nothing about. but in the traditional sense of human kindness i am ignorant. because i have chosen to put myself in situations where philanthropy does not exist unless i myself will it to be. so i see the worst in people because the worst is all they have to give at the time. it goes back to the classic argument of whether people are good or evil by nature. blame the parents. blame myself. i’m sick of dealing with other people’s bullshit.

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Selected Scenes: Beneath the Planet of the Apes

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brent, like taylor, is a survivor. after travelling through the same break in space time, he crash lands on post-apocalyptic earth of the year 3978 where man is all but extinct and the planet is ruled by intelligent apes. they are losing numbers to a supernatural force preventing them from encroaching in to the forbidden zone, an area where monuments from the past still rise from the ashes of society as we knew it. brent escapes imprisonment by the apes and enters the forbidden zone to look for taylor, and finds a race of humans living underground. they are physically mutated, presumably from radiation poisoning, and have evolved a telekinetic ability that has prevented the apes from marching on their territory. however, as the apes grow wise and close in, the humans threaten a second doomsday on the planet with an atomic bomb they worship at the altar like jesus on the cross. all hope to prevent annihilation are moot. the apes enter the encampment. brent is killed in a flurry of machine gun fire. taylor, who is revealed to be alive and held captive by the mutants, is mortally-wounded. with his dying breath he actives the bomb, and the film ends.

on the list of great movie sequels beside star trek and the godfather, beneath the planet of the apes is unfairly treated. every couple of years a new planet of the apes movie comes out in an attempt to revitalize the franchise and the original sequels, from beneath to battle, are forgotten in this stream of endless reboots and sequels. those who have seen beneath as it rests within the timeline of the original series can agree though that it expands on the mythology of the original in a slick, fast-paced (ninety lean minutes) package. and the abrupt, nihilistic ending (courtesy of charlton heston, apparently to make sure his appearance in further sequels was never going to happen) is the definition of awesome. everyone dies horribly, especially brent in the third-to-last shot of the film (literally). the planet is effectively destroyed. fade to black. end credits. there was nowhere left to go from there but back in time.

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Jay’s Take on: West Side Story

2016

things age. stuff dies. facts of life. old electronics don’t last forever (but in nintendo’s case an eternity). people weaken. and works of fiction that once were considered timeless are now running through the eye of the contemporary critic. they will tell you that while a movie or stage play or any entertainment can age poorly it can be appreciated by anyone willing to acknowledge its place in history. i call bullshit. it boils down to one’s own opinion. at the end of the day you either like something or you don’t. it’s that simple. if you don’t like citizen kane it’s a moot point to argue that it’s aged poorly because it’s ignorant to think you will change another’s opinion based on the discourse of the establishment. that and citizen kane is a great movie and anyone who tells you otherwise probably has a queue of dtv steven seagal movies on netflix (though even some of those are watchable).

i have not seen the film adaptation of west side story. in fact before tuesday night i had never seen the play performed in any incantation, nor could i tell you what songs were associated with it. i was excited to go in fresh with only its legacy to help me along. the word ‘hack’ kept illuminating in my mind as i watched the live performance. sondheim is a god to many but to know that west side was adapted from romeo and juliet just made me play with the revisionist aspects in my head. shakespeare’s original is a simple story told through complex prose that dissected the motivation of its characters. at this point in our time every story you could possibly imagine has been done to death in every medium possible. so it is the method then that the story is told and the quality of the telling that will tell you if a work will stand up to scrutiny. the particular performance of west side story that i saw could not hold up to my scrutiny. it was poorly cast, with dream sequences cut in and out of the story like a warner brothers producer messing with the latest dc picture. the songs themselves, the pumping blood of musical theater, were quieting (though i feel pretty is a fucking classic).

so what was the problem? was it the show itself or the play? were the problems i had the choices of the director or were they intended by the writers to begin with? i am in a position now where i could watch the oscar-winning film adaptation, or seek out another live performance and make the call for myself, or hell even ask someone involved with the production i viewed. but i don’t want to. i feel like i have seen the show and it is not necessary for me to see it again. that finality tells me that it was more the script then the show. but the burden of proof is on the show i watched and not the original source material. i turned to my partner during the performance, who has seen the movie but not the play, and asked them if the balletic fight choreography and tempered delivery of the songs were deliberate. they said it was. good enough for me.

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