So, things I know or suspect based on the character summaries at the cast page:
There are four crewmembers per shift. Each shift lasts 25 years, after which the crew wakes up their replacements and goes to sleep. I wonder how many more shifts there are (that is, how many more sleeping crew there are), if any, after second shift.
Second shift has two men and two women. Is there an assumption that they’ll pair off romantically? Are they already pairs when they’re selected?
I’m guessing that if that’s the case, Blasto is (or will be) paired with Li. (They did photograph them together.) So presumably Gartner is paired with Freeman? That sounds like it could make sense in terms of their (minimal) character profiles.
We only know of two crewmembers from first shift, the commander and the flight engineer, both men. Were there two women on first shift as well? If so it looks like we won’t be seeing them in the show. Since at least some of the drama appears to hinge on the first-shift commander having issues with relinquishing command, maybe the two first-shift women are already in cryosleep when we join the action.
I’m quietly (well, maybe not so quietly) excited about some of the transmedia ideas they’ve hinted at. The show takes place in an AU where Werner von Braun defected to the US before World War II, putting the US space program 10 years ahead of our timeline. But it sounds like the Internet and social media is very much that of today, with things like Buzzfeed, viral reality shows, and Twitter.
So they could have a transmedia component playing out via real-world Twitter and online video in which Actaeon, the profit-oriented company that took over the mission a few months ago from the US space program, and which only gives token nods to the mission’s science goals, repurposes the crew’s AI therapy program Ami 2.0 to manufacture drama in pursuit of ratings, then airs the resulting crew vlogs without their knowledge.
Given how vlog-based fictional webseries always have a steep believability hill to climb with this issue (these characters are sharing this content with the world why, exactly?), this sounds really clever, and makes me hope the transmedia will be really immersive and mind-bending (in the best sense).
There’s not much to say about Heermann’s Gulls except that they’re sexy. Digiscoped with a iPhone 6 Plus + @opticron MM3 60 ED & @phoneskopebirding adapter. #birds #birding #phoneskope #phoneskopebirding #phonescoping #digiscoping #Opticron (at La Jolla Cove, Ca)
No worries, I love talking about sailing with people. Knowing how to sail small boats is always useful (and fun!) and I hope you get the chance for a tallship someday. A few of them like to go down to the Med for winter, so you might keep an eye on autumn/spring too.
“At the end of the day, it’s just love, I guess. You fall in love with something and you’re impelled to make it better, willing to forgive it all kinds of faults and improve it inside your head.”
We were discussing literary devices, they have flashcards and such. So I would say the definition, someone would tell me the word, and someone else would give an example.
We got to Alliteration.
So I did the whole “She sells seashells by the shore, she surely shows the shells she sells, and she shows the shells she sells – the shore shells that she sells.”
And they stop, and look at me. “Wow Ms. F… how did you do that?!”
“You know, if you ever want to be good at rapping, you need to work on alliterative diction. Being able to say the words quickly and clearly is important.”
… class pauses.. “Can you rap Ms. F?”
… I pause. “If you are very good, I will do so at the end of the class.”
They were. So I did the bit from Satisfied.. “So this is what it feels like…” etc.
There was complete silence for a moment.
Then they BURST into applause, and I was cemented as the coolest substitute in the land. Huzzah.
The “if you’re very good, I’ll do (wacky, unexpected thing) at the end of class” is definitely the tactical nuke of subbing. Boredom is the implacable foe of every student. Give them a chance for a break in the monotony and they’ll do wonders.
My go-to was juggling, though in desperation I once promised, and then delivered, Pee Wee’s “big shoe” dance to “Tequila” from the biker bar scene. From then on kids asked for it whenever I subbed at that school.
endlessimpossibility: #oh man max looks totally lost#poor precious splendid
He really does, even more so a moment after this iirc!
If I may ramble for a moment (feel free to cut on reblogs, god!) – this is one of my fave FR blocking set-ups for disguised-character-development-as-misdirected-tension. Though the movie has shown that Max won’t use personal space violations as intimidation, it’s been pretty subtle so far. Kinda hard to make that obvious in a brawl (though the cues are there). So here is where the movie makes Max’s scrupulous boundary behavior (translation: his integrity) come home like a ton of bricks.
It’s a tight space. Max is still dangerously frightened and so clings to the idea of retaining some options by having a hostage. And so he wedges himself in there forcing Angharad to share a space that would be nauseatingly close with someone of unknown integrity and who has a gun. And yet… he’s leaving Angharad as much room as he can – look he’s backed off as far as he can be. There is never, even for a moment, a sense that Max will threaten her by invading her tiny remaining personal space, let alone do anything else. [as an aside, it would be absolutely par for the course for a man to just trample personal space here without even noticing it – just by unintentional shifting around. How many times have men blundered into your personal space bubble as if it didn’t exist, simply because they believe so completely in the presence of their own bubble? (no slight intended to the men who have awareness – you guys probably notice the same thing from these other guys!) Amazingly, Max doesn’t even do that despite the tight quarters]
But no – Max has already shown multiple times that while he’s maintaining his only-recently-regained personal space by any and all guns necessary, he also does everything he can not to crowd anyone else’s space as a means of intimidation. He backed off of Furiosa the moment he knew he had the upper hand. He blocked all of Nux’s enthused attempts to connect and ultimately put him on the dirt knocking the wind out of him without ever bulling into Nux’s space to establish dominance (for contrast, remember Slit trying to dominate Nux exactly this way). He doesn’t use the ability any guy with his strength and size could use, to crowd people as a means of intimidation. It’s totally and completely out of character for ‘scarily physical guy wins confrontation’ body language – and yet he doesn’t do it, not once.
And that same body language carries over here. I wasn’t sexual-cringe worried for a second when he forced Angharad to share such a limited niche with him – because everything he’d done up to that point showed he would not use invasion of space as a dominance maneuver. And amazingly, in this tiny constricted spot, he still manages to adhere to that body language. He’s not crowding her as a means of intimidation to keep her under control. He’s got the gun – he doesn’t need to exert one bit more force. And because he is not dominance seeking, he doesn’t.
As character development for Max as a trustworthy human, this is beautifully executed. And as character development for the movieitself as a movie that will refuse even momentary microaggressions (either to build tension or as icky humor), this is beautifully executed.
Fantastic.
That makes me think of one of my favourite shots from this film:
This is quite possibly one of the only shots in the film that is truly sexually charged. Our focus is on Angharad’s naked collarbone, her gorgeous hair and lips, the closeness of their bodies. The camera’s focus on her neck and mouth make the viewer almost feel the movement of her hair and her warm breath.
There’s just this moment of perfect stillness, offset by the tension in the Pass. As the rock walls grow close around the Rig, Max and Angharad’s bodies are pressed close together just inside the hold. At the risk of being too Freudian (though, let’s face it, it’s Miller and everything is Freudian), we are given the complimentary images of a gun barrel next to Angharad’s full lips and the long Rig penetrating the long, narrow archway of the Pass. The staging for this scene is uniquely sexual in a way that is quite different from anything else in the film.
And yet – Max is busy watching Furiosa’s movements and the cliffs beyond; he doesn’t really look at Angharad until she begins having her Braxton Hicks. As we see in the top gif, he looks past her to scan his surroundings; only when she cries out does he seem to remember that he’s sitting next to a pregnant girl and his eyes read: ‘oh, shit, now?’
As @redshoesnblueskies points out, this scene shows us a whole lot about Max, his integrity, and his respect for women. He’s oblivious. To him, she’s just another person that he happens to be crammed into a box with. And, oh fuck, she’s having contractions.
But that brings me back to the screencap I inserted here. The initial shot, focusing on Angharad, tells us more about what Angharad is thinking than what Max is thinking. Again, up until she cries out, he’s not thinking about her – he’s thinking about the Pass.
But Angharad? Angharad’s thinking about him.
This initial shot, we don’t see much of anything of Max but his shoulder, pushing in on Angharad’s space. And his gun, dangerously close to her face.
But we do see the tenseness in Angharad’s neck, the careful neutral expression on her face, even a glimpse of the downcast eyes. She doesn’t look him in the face, she just barely turns her face towards him, her movements subtle and stiff.
This moment is full of sexual tension. But it’s not Max feeling that tension – it’s Angharad.
And so here, within just a few shots, we are given a full demonstration of what male privilege looks like in day-to-day moments. Max is just having a normal (for him) day. Standoffs with hostile enemies, possible shootouts, the works. But in Angharad’s mind, she is framing the situation in terms not of possible gun violence, but possible sexual violence. Her body is pressed against another man’s, a gun to her face. She is tense, but also strangely collected. She has been in this situation before. Neutral expression and downcast eyes? That is the automatic-shutdown expression of a woman who has been abused before and who expects to be abused again.
For that one, tense moment, we’re not meant to see things out of Max’s perspective, we’re meant to see out of Angharad’s. And in her mind, she’s not thinking of what a good guy Max is for not abusing the situation. In her mind, she’s only expecting a groping hand – or worse. Not all men are rapists. Some are like Max. But that’s not the point of this shot: the point is that all women know what Angharad is expecting.
It’s only when the action starts up that we’e snapped back to Max’s perspective, once again worried about blazing machine guns and pregnant women.
And that, friends, is how you do visual storytelling.
– bai-xue
FUCKING BEAUTIFUL, YES.
and what does it say that, writing as a woman, that I just filed all of this under ‘assumed knowledge’ – because of course this is obvious to us [where ‘us’ equals the feminist readership I’m usually in discourse with] and needs no explaining…but it’s needful that we say it explicitly on occasion, because damn we all gloss over it as ‘assumed info’ way too often.
I really care about this character — she’s like my best friend, my other half. I worry for Sansa because she’s a real person to me. I’m constantly saying to David and Dan [Benioff and Weiss, the show’s creators], ‘What’s going to happen to her? You have to tell me!’ I almost think about her more than I do myself. It’s like a split personality. Sometimes I slip into her by mistake. – Sophie Turner by Dima Hohlov for The EDIT Magazine / NET-A-PORTER.com (May 2016)
