Ditambah lagi dengan panggilan buruk itu: Kaylee Hottle, yang berusia 18 tahun ketika dia meninggal minggu ini dalam kecelakaan mobil di Jaynesville, Maryland.

Hottle berperan dalam “Godzilla vs. Kong” dan tindak lanjutnya “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” sebagai Jia, seorang gadis kecil yang tinggal sendirian di Pulau Tengkorak, rumah bagi Kong dan makhluk raksasa lainnya, dan merupakan keturunan terakhir yang diketahui dari suku asli yang hampir punah, Iwi.

Jia memiliki ikatan yang kuat dengan kera besar dan berkomunikasi dengannya melalui Bahasa Isyarat Amerika. Hubungan tersebut disampaikan terutama melalui gerak tubuh dan ekspresi wajah serta dilakukan oleh akting Hottle dan kru efek visual. Sangat mudah untuk meremehkan tingkat kesulitan dalam memanusiakan karakter yang hubungan terpentingnya adalah dengan karakter bukan manusia yang akan tetap menjadi abstraksi hingga berbulan-bulan setelah fotografi utama selesai. Hal ini membutuhkan imajinasi, fokus, dan kemampuan untuk mengambil arah yang sangat tepat sambil mengubah hasilnya menjadi sesuatu yang terasa organik.

“Kalau membayangkan Godzilla dan Kong, itu sulit,” kata Rebecca Hall, yang berperan sebagai ahli bahasa antropologi Dr. Ilene Andrews di kedua film tersebut, karakter yang tidak hanya mempelajari dan melindungi Kong tetapi juga menjadi ibu angkat Jia. “Itu sulit, karena yang sering terjadi adalah bola tenis yang mengenai tongkat.”

Hottle sendiri adalah seorang tunarungu, lahir dari keluarga yang semuanya tuli di Atlanta, Georgia. Ibunya Ketsi adalah orang Korea-Amerika, dan ayahnya Joshua adalah seorang pria kulit putih keturunan dari empat generasi penyandang tunarungu. Dia dididik di Texas School for the Deaf di Austin dan terjun ke dunia akting melalui iklan TV.

Asisten direktur casting di “Kong: Skull Island” tahun 2017 melihat Hottle dalam iklan pertamanya, untuk Convo, layanan relai video dengan pengaturan yang memungkinkan penelepon tuna rungu atau tuna rungu terhubung ke penerjemah bahasa isyarat di seluruh dunia, dan menyarankannya ke direktur casting “Godzilla vs. Kong,” Sarah Halley Finn, sebagai kandidat untuk memerankan Jia.

Penampilan Hottle yang menyentuh secara emosional dalam dua film monster terkenal tersebut—mirip dalam perasaan dan fungsi plot dengan ikatan antara karakter utama “ET: The Extraterrestrial” dan teman manusianya Eliot—membuatnya menjadi aktris tunarungu yang paling banyak dicari sejak Marlee Matlin, yang pada tahun 1987 menjadi pemain tunarungu pertama yang memenangkan Oscar, sebagai Aktris Terbaik dalam “Children of a Lesser God.” (Maitlin berduka atas meninggalnya Hottle di Instagram, dengan menyatakan, “Semoga kecantikan dan bakatnya menjadi kenangan selamanya.”)

Karya Hottle yang luar biasa dalam “Godzilla vs. Kong” adalah faktor utama yang menyebabkan tindak lanjutnya memfokuskan subplot utama pada Jia: dia mengetahui bahwa sebagian dari sukunya selamat, berkembang di bagian Hollow Earth yang sebelumnya belum dijelajahi, dan ingin dia meninggalkan Dr. Andrews dan dunia permukaan dan “pulang” ke titik asal budayanya. Kisah Jia dalam film tersebut mencerminkan kisah Kong, yang juga percaya bahwa dirinya adalah satu-satunya yang selamat dari masyarakat yang pernah berkembang namun menemukan kera raksasa hidup di bagian Hollow Earth yang sama dengan suku Iwi. Sayangnya, negara ini diperintah oleh seorang lalim yang dikenal sebagai Skar King yang harus digulingkan sebelum dia dapat mencapai tujuannya untuk naik ke permukaan dan menaklukkan planet ini. Penerimaan kembali Jia ke dalam sukunya memainkan peran sentral dalam kekalahan Skar King, karena Iwi adalah pembawa berita dan subjek dari dewi monster Mothra.

Adegan paling mengharukan dalam kedua film tersebut terkait dengan penampilan Hottle. Salah satunya adalah momen dalam “Godzilla vs. Kong” ketika Jia menghibur Kong, yang dibius dan dirantai di dek kapal saat hujan badai, tangan mungilnya terulur ke arahnya. Gambar tersebut mengingatkan pada poster “ET”, dengan gambar Tuhan dan manusia yang menyentuh ujung jari seperti Kapel Sistina, kecuali sisi pertukaran yang bukan manusia adalah jari seukuran kontainer kargo.

“Mereka benar-benar memiliki tangan busa dengan jari runcing yang mereka ajukan ke arahnya,” kata Hall Majalah Orangdalam sebuah wawancara yang waktunya bertepatan dengan perilisan film kedua. “Sulit untuk tidak ditertawakan.”

Momen hebat lainnya adalah adegan klimaks di film kedua di mana Jia harus memutuskan apakah akan tetap bersama ibu angkatnya dan menjadi bagian dari suku Iwi. Momen itu, seperti banyak momen lainnya, sepenuhnya dilakukan oleh pertukaran ASL minimal dan close-up ekspresif dari Hottle dan Hall.

Hall, rekan mainnya di “Godzilla vs. Kong” Alexander Skarsgaard, dan peserta lain di kedua produksi mempelajari ASL sehingga mereka dapat berbicara dengan Hottle. Fala Chen, yang berperan sebagai kepala suku Iwi di “Godzilla x Kong,” juga mengenal ASL sebelum bergabung dengan serial film tersebut; meskipun ia sendiri tidak tuli, ia belajar ASL untuk berperan sebagai gadis bisu di drama tahun 2008 “Moonlight Resonance.”

Hall memberikan penghormatan kepada putrinya di layar dalam sebuah postingan di halaman Instagram-nya yang menyertakan beberapa foto dirinya dan Hottle dalam produksi. “Sedih mendengar berita ini,” tulis caption-nya. “Hatiku tertuju pada keluargamu. Kamu akan dirindukan, Kaylee.”

Satu-satunya penghargaan utama Hottle lainnya adalah penampilan tamu di sebuah episode versi reboot dari CBS ‘Magnum, PI. Dia ditetapkan untuk tampil di What Doesn’t Kill Us, sebuah petualangan fantasi tentang orang-orang cacat yang menjadi pahlawan super, tetapi pada saat kematiannya, film tersebut masih dalam tahap pra-produksi, jadi perannya harus dipilih ulang.

Hottle menggunakan koneksinya di Hollywood untuk melakukan advokasi atas nama orang-orang tunarungu dan tuna rungu, dan tidak hanya dalam bisnis hiburan. Teri Devine, direktur asosiasi inklusi di badan amal Royal National Institute for Deaf People di Inggris, mengatakan bahwa Hottle menggunakan platformnya untuk “meningkatkan kesadaran dan menginspirasi orang lain untuk mendorong perubahan positif bagi para penyandang tunarungu atau gangguan pendengaran” dan “membuktikan bahwa tidak ada batasan mengenai apa yang dapat dicapai oleh para penyandang tunarungu atau gangguan pendengaran.”

Hottle adalah penumpang mobil yang jatuh dan merenggut nyawanya. Kantor koroner setempat mengatakan dia terbunuh oleh “beberapa luka akibat benda tumpul” yang disebabkan oleh benturan tersebut, dan menyatakan kematiannya sebagai kecelakaan. Ada dua penumpang lainnya: seorang pengemudi dan penumpang kedua. Sopir dibawa ke rumah sakit terdekat dan dipulangkan dengan luka yang tidak mengancam jiwa. Penumpang kedua menolak perawatan medis. Kantor sheriff mengatakan kecepatan yang berlebihan diduga menjadi faktor penyebab kecelakaan itu.

Dalam postingan video Facebook, ayah Hottle, Joshua, mengatakan kepada pengemudi, “Saya telah memaafkanmu. Jangan biarkan kejadian ini menghancurkan sisa hidupmu.”

Ibunya, Ketsi, berkata, “Saya masih merasa Kaylee bersama kita.”

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

Dua puluh lima tahun setelah dirilis, Xbox Game Studios telah menata ulang pengalaman orisinal tersebut dalam “Halo: Campaign Evolved,” sebuah remake yang meningkatkan kekuatan sumbernya dengan peningkatan di seluruh narasi yang diperluas. Dilihat dari POV seorang gamer tahun 2026, ini adalah pengalaman yang sangat sederhana yang mengingatkan kita pada kelahiran kembali “Doom” yang relatif baru dalam cara ia menekankan senjata dan musuh tanpa kekacauan peningkatan, misi sampingan, atau elemen lain yang sering kali membebani penembak efektif dengan bagasi ekstra. “Campaign Evolved” ramping dan efektif, bisa dibilang agak tipis pada tingkat desain untuk tahun 2026 tetapi sebuah game yang berfungsi sebagai kemunduran efektif ke masa yang lebih sederhana tanpa terasa terlalu ketinggalan jaman.

Kumpulkan pasukan Anda (baik empat pemain online atau layar terpisah di rumah) dan masuklah ke dalam kisah “Halo: Campaign Evolved,” yang sebenarnya dibuka dengan misi baru yang menyiapkan panggung untuk narasi impor dari game aslinya. Panggungnya diatur dengan sesuatu yang dikenal sebagai “Operasi: Meteorit,” di mana protagonis Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 dan Komando Luar Angkasa Perserikatan Bangsa-Bangsa pertama kali menghadapi pasukan Kovenan. Ini terungkap dalam tiga misi yang secara organik terbagi menjadi sepuluh misi dari game aslinya, yang sebagian besar berlangsung di Pilar Musim Gugur atau planet Reach. Musuh utama, kekuatan yang dikenal sebagai Kovenan, tetap sama, kemudian bergabung dengan permainan dengan Air Bah, musuh parasit yang terlihat seperti “Doom” yang terbuang, atau mimpi buruk lebih lanjut dari desainer “Alien” HR Giger. Perpaduan antara musuh-musuh tradisional seperti prajurit dan fiksi ilmiah/horror membantu menjaga gameplay dan penceritaan “Halo” agar tidak membosankan, tetapi ini adalah permainan yang mengikuti model yang relatif dapat diprediksi: Masuk ruangan, bunuh semua yang ada di dalamnya, pindah ke ruangan berikutnya, ulangi sekitar 50 kali.

Untuk membuat “Campaign Evolved” terasa lebih segar bagi audiens dengan harapan yang berbeda dibandingkan tahun 2001, para pengembang telah mengintegrasikan sembilan senjata baru, bersama dengan semua senjata yang tersedia sebelumnya. Penggemar “Halo 2” akan mengenali senjata seperti SMG, Fuel Rod Cannon, dan Sentinel Beam, dan menikmati kesempatan untuk menerapkannya dalam cerita asal waralaba. Anda juga bisa mendapatkan Pedang Energi di game ini, meskipun semoga berhasil menggunakan senjata jarak dekat di game yang semuanya menembak Anda. (Saya tidak pernah menganggapnya berguna, kebanyakan menggunakan SMG, Assault Rifle, Plasma Rifle, dan Needler kapan pun tersedia.) Seperti kebanyakan penembak di era ini, “Halo: Campaign Evolved” adalah siklus persenjataan saat Anda kehabisan amunisi dan mengambil daya tembak dari musuh yang Anda bunuh. Dengan lingkungan game yang relatif hambar, variasinya tergantung pada tipe musuh dan tipe senjata, tapi ada sesuatu yang hampir menyegarkan tentang game yang membuatnya sesederhana ini di saat terlalu banyak yang merasa berantakan.

Jika lingkungannya terkadang terasa tahun 2000-an, potongan adegannya terasa antara dulu dan sekarang, ditingkatkan dan dibuat ulang dengan sebagian besar pengisi suara yang sama seperti aslinya, dan dirancang sedemikian rupa sehingga membuatnya terasa menyatu dengan aspek kuno dari game tersebut. Pengembang di Xbox mengambil peningkatan selangkah lebih maju dengan memperluas penggunaan kendaraan dan, yang agak kontroversial, memungkinkan Anda berlari cepat. Terakhir, pembuatnya memperkenalkan elemen koleksi dari judul “Halo” lainnya yang disebut “Skulls”, yang dapat memadukan gameplay lebih jauh lagi dengan memvariasikan pengalaman, dan membuka sesuatu yang disebut “Campaign Remix”, sebuah mode baru yang pada dasarnya dapat membuat “Halo” menjadi Roguelike dengan musuh, senjata, dan variabel lain yang diacak.

Ini mungkin bukan kritik video game yang terdalam, namun “Halo: Campaign Evolved” adalah apa yang diharapkan orang-orang: sebuah game yang bernostalgia dan kekinian, menghibur sekaligus mengingatkan para gamer seberapa jauh industri ini telah berkembang. Faktanya, kontroversi terbesarnya mungkin adalah fakta bahwa ia dirilis di PlayStation bersamaan dengan Xbox, dan beberapa pihak menyindir bahwa itu berarti berakhirnya perang konsol (dan Sony menang). Pada tahun 2001, eksklusivitas “Halo” membantu mendefinisikan merek game Microsoft, namun banyaknya pilihan game yang luar biasa 25 tahun kemudian telah membantu mewujudkan suatu hari ketika akses terasa lebih penting dari sebelumnya. Dan kini semua orang, bahkan gamer Sony, dapat mengapresiasi warisan “Halo”.

Microsoft menyediakan salinan ulasan judul ini. Ini akan dirilis untuk PS5, Windows, dan Xbox Series X/S pada 28 Juli 2026.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

Meski begitu, saat saya duduk di kamar hotel, bersantai setelah tujuh hari pertama saya di festival tersebut (dan menonton jarak jauh selama berminggu-minggu setelah kejadian tersebut), saya mencoba memberi diri saya rasa memiliki atas pengalaman saya di festival ini. Sulit untuk bekerja selagi Anda melakukan penyembuhan, terutama ketika Anda merasa butuh waktu terlalu lama untuk melakukannya. Tapi saya senang berada di sini untuk merayakan film dan persekutuan yang menyertai festival ini.

Oleh karena itu, salah satu kenyamanan terbesar Fantasia setiap tahun adalah, seperti jarum jam, selalu ada film Alice Maio Mackay baru untuk dinikmati. Di usianya yang masih 21 tahun, pembuat film trans Australia terbaru, “Dunia Kita yang Berkembang,” adalah dia kedelapan film, dan (bahkan dalam bentuknya yang pendek, berdurasi 68 menit) terasa seperti evolusi berbeda dari gaya dan genrenya. Dalam pendahuluannya, Mackay menggambarkannya di antara “Doctor Who,” film nongkrong Kevin Smith di toko video yang pemalas, dan pilot CW yang tidak pernah dibuat serial.

Perbandingan tersebut terasa tepat, dan bukan hanya karena durasi episode TV yang hampir sama; “Our Effed Up World” berpusat pada Sheri (Sara Thompson), seorang wanita muda yang berduka atas kematian neneknya (yang kita lihat dalam kilas balik yang diperankan oleh Kerry Armstrong dari ketenaran “Neighbours”). Dia menjalani hidup, menghabiskan sebagian besar waktunya bergaul dengan teman-temannya Finn (“Jess McLeod” dari The Audacity) dan Poppy (“Annapurna Sriram dari Fucktoys”) di toko video milik Finn yang sedang sekarat. Hubungannya dengan ayahnya yang gila kerja, Nick (Scott Major, juga legenda sinetron Australia), tegang, sehingga sulit untuk terhubung ketika mereka mulai menghubungkan beberapa penghilangan misterius dengan kemunculan meteor hijau aneh yang mendarat di sekitar kota.

Film-film Mackay telah lama berkembang dengan anggaran sederhana melalui banyak karakter, dan kualitas hidup itulah yang membantu “Effed Up” mengatasi properti chintzy-nya (makhluk asing dan sarangnya, khususnya, terasa sedikit Spirit Halloween dengan cara yang menawan) dan durasi yang terlalu pendek. Sriram dan McLeod, khususnya, terjun ke dalam humor kering dan chemistry antarpribadi dengan baik, menawarkan malaikat dan setan di bahu Sheri yang ambivalen dari Thompson. Suasana hangout film Smith bekerja lebih baik daripada genre window dressing, tapi itu terasa memiliki tujuan: Mackay hanya ingin memperkenalkan kita pada karakter yang hanya akan kita lihat selama satu jam tetapi merasa seperti mereka sudah saling kenal selama beberapa dekade.

Tentu saja masuk akal jika pembuat film trans Jane Schoenbrun (yang film terbarunya, “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” juga memainkan festival tersebut pada akhir pekan pembukaannya) memiliki kredit produser di sini. Kedua pembuat film tersebut bermain dengan riang di ruang terbatas genre dan queerness/transness, Mackay khususnya menyalurkan kabut kemalasan kelompok sosial queer Gen-Z melalui media yang jelas-jelas dia kagumi. Saat “The Serpent’s Skin” mengeksplorasi bimbingan queer yang beracun melalui “The Craft”, “Effed Up” menggunakan invasi alien untuk menyoroti cara kita bersandar pada teman dan orang yang kita cintai untuk memproses kesedihan yang tak terduga.

Sama pendeknya, namun tidak kalah riuhnya, adalah judul yang gila-gilaan “Amazon di Planet X,” sebuah adaptasi animasi dari buku komik kultus Filipina oleh Carlo Vergara tentang seorang penata rambut gay yang, berkat menelan batu ajaib, berubah menjadi pahlawan super berdada yang mempertahankan desanya dari segala jenis makhluk raksasa. Ada adaptasi karakter sebelumnya, termasuk film live-action tahun 2006; Pengambilan animasi Avid Liongoren tentang karakter tersebut mengambil semua semangat komik (itu sendiri merupakan gambaran dari pahlawan super wanita Filipina Darna) dan membuang banyak sekali kilau ke dalamnya.

Bertempat di antara “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” dan “Steven Universe,” “Zsazsa” menyalurkan begitu banyak kegelisahan, baik universal maupun spesifik budaya, ke dalam perjuangan Ada (Phi Palmos), seorang penata rambut berusia tiga puluhan yang mendambakan kehidupan di kota besar tetapi berjuang untuk mempertahankan bisnis salon rambutnya. Sahabatnya, Didi (Io Balanon yang riuh, yang mudah menjadi sorotan film), mendorongnya untuk menjalani kehidupan terbaiknya, termasuk mengajak cowok berotot Dodong (Siglo Pecho), yang, di mata Ada, berubah menjadi semacam Jojo/Adonis ala Squidward yang Tampan. (Putingnya juga tidak dapat dihentikan, pecah bahkan melalui tank topnya yang minim.)

Tapi meteor ungu seukuran melon tersebut jatuh ke rumah Ada, dia menelannya, dan dengan kata-kata ajaib, menumbuhkan kekuatan yang luar biasa, hutan dengan kunci jahe yang banyak, dan proporsi yang akan membuat Chun-Li dari “Street Fighter” tersipu. Beruntung bagi kota ini, dia ada di sana tepat waktu untuk menghentikan tituler Amazonistas, kwintet TERF yang melakukan vamping yang misandry-nya, meski bisa dimengerti, membuat seluruh Bumi dalam bahaya akibat keburukan mereka yang semakin besar, yang harus dilancarkan Ada (sebagai kota baru di sini Zsazsa) dengan paha tebal dan daftar gerakan Wonder Woman.

Sebagai teks yang aneh, “Zsazsa” menemukan beberapa nuansa menyenangkan di tengah semua semburan warna cerah dan animasi yang sangat mengalir (milik animator lokal Rocketsheep Studio, yang daftar pekerja magangnya di bagian kredit terasa hampir sepanjang filmnya); ada petunjuk tentang “Adventure Time” dan bahkan kekerasan akrobatik sensual dari game seperti “Bayonetta” dan “NieR.” Namun di tengah semua desain karakter yang ceria dan lelucon seks yang cabul (satu monster terlihat sangat mirip terong yang sugestif), perjalanan Ada melalui gendernya Dan kepercayaan diri adalah hal yang membuat penasaran; Presentasi Zsazsa terasa mirip dengan ekspresi gender drag yang transformatif (pada kenyataannya, pemutaran Fantasia kami diawali dengan intro yang menampilkan seorang ratu glamor berpakaian seperti Zsazsa; Liongoren muncul di panggung melemparkan kilauan sambil melakukan pose pertarungan).

Dalam kondisi terburuknya, “Zsazsa Zaturrnah” kadang-kadang menyeret, durasi 80 menitnya berputar melalui kegelisahan aneh yang sama tentang trauma masa kanak-kanak, kecemasan orang dewasa, dan politik kesetaraan gender (bukan suatu kebetulan bahwa kaum Amazon membuat senjata yang menggunakan simbol gender perempuan). Namun untuk upaya indie yang ingin merayakan komunitas, ekspresi, dan penerimaan, Anda bisa melakukan hal yang jauh lebih buruk.

Berbicara tentang suka berkelahi, Anda hampir tidak dapat menemukan upaya lo-fi yang lebih banyak di festival itu daripada “Dance Freak” karya Alan Resnick dan Robby Rackleff, yang dibuat hanya dengan $40.000 dan direkam selama tiga tahun dengan gaya yang mengingatkan pada segalanya mulai dari David Lynch hingga Guy Maddin hingga “Pertunjukan Luar Biasa Tim dan Eric, Kerja Hebat!” Lagu kompilasi terakhir itu juga, mengingat Resnick adalah alumni Adult Swim yang dihormati, membuat film pendek surealis seperti “Rumah Ini Ada Orang-Orang Di Dalamnya” dan “Rekaman Beruang yang Belum Diedit”; kepekaan komedinya terletak pada ketidaknyamanan luar biasa dari bentuk film jadul, mengundang tawa dari ancaman menakutkan dan absurdisme yang ada di baliknya.

Itu, dan banyak hal yang berputar-putar, adalah inti dari “Dance Freak,” sebuah karya hitam-putih yang sangat lucu dan berlatar kota apokaliptik ketika asap mengepul ke langit dan jalanan dipenuhi dengan kejahatan, kemiskinan, dan geng-geng droog keliling yang disebut “Salad Boys.” Hanya mencoba untuk bertahan hidup adalah Obie (Rackleff) yang berusia tiga puluhan, yang ekspresi hangdog dan pakaiannya yang basah kuyup membuatnya mudah untuk mengetahui alasannya, ketika dia bertemu pacarnya yang ambisius, Dorty (Megan Koester) untuk makan siang di restoran, dia mencampakkannya. Sementara itu, sosok misterius berjaket kulit (juga Rackleff) berkeliaran di sekitar kota, mengayunkan anggota tubuhnya dalam tarian mengerikan yang, ketika orang yang salah terlalu dekat, membuat daging mereka roboh dengan sendirinya.

Apakah “orang aneh dansa” itu merupakan manifestasi dari kemarahan dan kebencian Obie terhadap dunia (dan wanita) yang membuatnya merasa seperti pecundang? Atau apakah dia produk eksperimen sains aneh yang dikejar oleh Dr. Dilly Gorgul (Sheila Mears), yang melacaknya, dengan gaya Dr. Loomis, melintasi kota dengan alat peledak yang terlihat seperti lem panas yang sudah rusak? “Dance Freak” mengandaikan bahwa ia berada dalam naskah yang berbelit-belit dan kacau yang tidak dapat dijelaskan secara terbuka dan mudah.

Namun, anarki komik itu adalah senjata terhebat “Freak”, karena ancaman konspirasi absurd yang sama yang dapat Anda lihat dalam film pendek Conner O’Malley (cocok, karena O’Malley muncul di sini dalam satu adegan keajaiban sebagai sesama “orang aneh” yang memusuhi Obie saat mereka duduk di sel penjara). Dunia ini gila dan gila; Bos Obie, Megaman (Stavros Halkias), melontarkan kata-kata umpatan dengan frekuensi yang sangat tidak masuk akal, dan Salad Boys berkeliaran di jalanan mengejek orang-orang agar memakan kantong plastik raksasa berisi sayuran hijau. (Mengingat bahwa saat ini Anda akan terkena kasus cyclospora yang buruk, itu mungkin merupakan teror yang paling tepat waktu dari “Dance Freak”.) Setiap karakter dalam hal ini gila dengan caranya masing-masing, yang membuat film ini terasa seperti mimpi demam.

Seringkali, hal ini berhasil, terutama mengingat estetika hitam-putih yang kasar dan kasar yang memunculkan gaya indie di awal tahun 90-an, seolah-olah “Clerks” memiliki nuansa “The Elephant Man” dan “Pi” yang disatukan. Ada rasa malapetaka dan kesuraman yang meresap, kehampaan hitam pekat yang menggemakan keputusasaan Obie pada keadaan dunianya. Ini mungkin tidak sepenuhnya masuk akal, dan mungkin memperluas rentang perhatian Anda bahkan pada waktu 100 menit yang cepat, karena garis singgungnya menjadi semakin kacau. Namun tidak sulit untuk melihat bagaimana Anda juga bisa tersesat dalam pengaruh hipnotisnya.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

HOW DO I LOVE THEE: SONNET 43: Elizabeth Barrett Browning 

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways….I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death….

When I was a young girl with thoughts of romantic fancy dancing through my head, I envisioned the day when a suitor would write a poem or song dedicated to me. During our courtship, Roger wooed me with Shakespeare, often quoting from “Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day.” Then one year, my Beloved said he would do one better, and on our 20th anniversary, he surprised me with this article entitled: “ROGER LOVES CHAZ.” He excerpted it from a chapter in his memoir, “Life Itself.” It has been four years and three months since Roger passed away, but today, July 18, on what would have been our twenty-fifth anniversary, his words were once again reverberating, and so please permit me to share them with you once more. And today, I am adding a brief video that I call Joy. —Chaz Ebert

WEDNESDAY, July 18, is the 20th anniversary of our marriage. How can I begin to tell you about Chaz? She fills my horizon, she is the great fact of my life, she has my love, she saved me from the fate of living out my life alone, which is where I seemed to be heading. If my cancer had come, and it would have, and Chaz had not been there with me, I can imagine a descent into lonely decrepitude. I was very sick. I might have vegetated in hopelessness. This woman never lost her love, and when it was necessary she forced me to want to live. She was always there believing I could do it, and her love was like a wind forcing me back from the grave.

Does that sound too dramatic? You were not there. She was there every day, visiting me in the hospital whether I knew it or not, becoming an expert on my problems and medications, researching possibilities, asking questions, making calls, even giving little Christmas and Valentine’s Day baskets to my nurses, who she knew by name.

Chaz is a strong woman, sure of herself. I’d never met anyone like her. At some point in her childhood a determination must have been formed that she would make a success of herself. She was born into a large family on the West Side of Chicago, and already in high school was a tireless achiever. Her school yearbook shows her on every other page, a member of everything from the National Honor society to Spanish Club, and as vice president of the senior class to best dancer. She won a scholarship to the University of Chicago, but didn’t accept it: “What did I know? Nobody told me it was a great university. I just wanted to get out of Chicago, to go somewhere on my own.” She went to the University of Dubuque, and in keeping with the times she was a civil rights activist.

There she met her first husband, and soon they were married and raising their children Josibiah and Sonia. She might easily have called off her professional dreams and returned to Chicago, where Merle was an electrical engineer. She went to the University of Wisconsin at Madison for a BA in sociology, and then graduated from the DePaul College of Law, the alma mater of generations of Chicago politicians and lawyers. And all this time raising her family, as she and Merle moved to the suburbs and bought a home. She was a litigator at Bell, Boyd and Lloyd, an important firm. After 17 years she and Merle were divorced, but remain friends.

We like to tell people we were “introduced by Ann Landers,” which is technically true, although Eppie Lederer didn’t know her at the time. The night I took Eppie to an open AA meeting, we decided to go out to dinner together afterwards; this was the first and only time we ever had dinner for two. In the restaurant, Chaz was at a nearby table that included a couple of people I knew. I didn’t know her, but I’d seen her before and was attracted. I liked her looks, her voluptuous figure, and the way she presented herself. She took a lot of care with her appearance and her clothes never looked quickly thrown together. She seemed to be holding the attention of her table. You never get anywhere with a woman you can’t talk intelligently with.

Something possessed me to pull off one of the oldest tricks in the book. “I have a couple of friends over there I’d love for you to meet,” I told Eppie, and got up to take her across. As the introductions went around, Chaz was included. When we went back to our own table, I had her card. I studied the card and showed it to Eppie, who said, “You sly fox.”

I came back from the Toronto Film Festival with the card on my mind. I called Chaz and invited her to attend the Lyric Opera, which I’d subscribed to a year earlier because Danny Newman, the Lyric’s press agent, had stood in my office door and said, “A man like you not going go the Lyric, you should be ashamed.” Chaz, who later told me she never expected to hear from me again, said, “Actually, I’m on the women’s board of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.” I said I loved the Symphony, but I had, cough, subscription seats at the Lyric for Monday night. The opera was “Tosca.” She said it was her favorite. “Does that scare you?” “No,” I said, “why should it?” At the time I knew nothing about “Tosca.”

We went to dinner afterwards at a restaurant in Greek Town. Something happened. She had a particular quality. She didn’t seem to be a “date” but an equal. She knew where she stood, and I found that attractive. I was going out to Los Angeles a few days later, and I asked her to come along. We formed a serious bond rather quickly. It was an understood thing. I was in love, I was serious, I was ready for my life to change. I had been on hold too long. She lived on the 82nd floor of the Hancock Center and started sending me daily e-mails, even after we’d seen each other earlier the same evening. Her love letters were poetic, idealistic and often passionate. I responded as a man and a lover. As a newspaperman, I observed she never, ever, made a copy-reading error. I saved every one of her letters along with my own, and have them encrypted on my computer, locked inside a file where I can’t reach them because the program and the operating system are now 20 years out of date. But they’re in there. I’m not about to entrust them to anyone at the Apple Genius Counter.

Our lives grew together. One day in May at the Cannes Film Festival we rented a car and drove over to San Remo in Italy to visit the grave of Edward Lear, and on the way back we stopped in Monte Carlo and in a cafe over coffee I proposed marriage. Why did I choose Monte Carlo, a place I have no desire to ever see again? I should have chosen London or Venice or for that matter Chicago. I wasn’t thinking in those terms. We were sitting there talking in a little cafe at the end of a happy day and I became overwhelmed with the desire to propose marriage. Chaz filled my mind. She excited me physically. She was funny. She made a reading of my life rather quickly, understood what I did and how I had to do it, and after I proposed marriage she resigned as a lawyer because I wanted her to travel more than she would otherwise be able to.

Chaz became the vice president of the Ebert Company. It wasn’t merely a title. She organized my contracts, protected my interests, negotiated, wheeled and dealed. I’ve never understood business and have no patience with business meetings or legal details. I had a weakness for signing things just to make them go away. She observed this, and defended me. It was a partnership.

We had times together I will always remember. Right after our first Christmas together, we flew to Venice, where I promised Chaz it would be rainy, cold, deserted, and we would have it all to ourselves. That was how I’d first seen Venice in 1966, and it was the same. It was romantic, sleeping late in the Royal Danelli and then waking up and making love and looking out across the Grand Canal. The hotel was half empty, the rooms a fraction of the summer cost. The city was shrouded in mist and always haunting. Romance in the winter in Venice is intimate and private, almost hushed. One night we went to the Municipal Casino, carefully taking only as much money as we were ready to lose, and we lost it. In a little restaurant we had enough left for spaghetti with two plates, and then lacked even the fare for the canal waterbus. We walked the long way back through the night and cold, our arms around each other, figures appearing out of the fog, lights traced on the wet stones, pausing now and again to kiss and be solemn. It was one of those experiences that seals a marriage.

At Cannes we bought a chicken sandwich for Quentin Tarantino in a beach restaurant, after “Reservoir Dogs” had been a success but he was broke. The next time we saw him at Cannes was after “Pulp Fiction,” when Miramax had rented a ballroom in the Carlton for him. It was the first time we remembered. Another night, after seeing “Boyz N the Hood” and being awed by it, we drove out of town for dinner with John Singleton, so young and filled with plans. Chaz seemed to know everybody and to remember all the names; I had often been more abstracted than anyone realized.

We had fun together. In Salvador, the capitol of Bahia in Brazil, we decided to go to a Lambada nightclub, and practiced the dance in our hotel room. Wandering around the town, we saw a dress shop with local fashions and Chaz bought a low-cut white summer gown with lots of ruffles. She looked sexy as hell when we left the hotel. When we walked into the club, an odd silence fell. Something was wrong. People seemed to be smiling for the wrong reasons. An English-speaking waitress took mercy on us, and explained the dress was a national costume intended for pageants and such. Wearing it to a nightclub was like me dressing as Uncle Sam.

In London, we stayed at 22 Jermyn Street, the former Eyrie Mansion. Chaz drew me into the contemporary art scene. I’d started collecting my Edward Lear watercolors in the 1980s, but after we moved into our town house with expanses of bare wall, we could think in terms of larger paintings. In the Purdy-Hicks Gallery on the South Bank, where we’d gone to look at work by our friend David Hiscock, we saw a spacious canvas in a store room and found ourselves side by side just regarding it. This was by Gillian Ayres, a formidable abstract expressionist who covered huge areas with bright impasto. It was a work inspired by a kite festival in India, and its energy flooded the room. Over a few years we obtained five works by Ayres, and even had dinner with her one night at the Groucho Club, where the raffish atmosphere matched her roots in London’s 1950s.

The greatest pleasure came from annual trips we made with our grandchildren Raven, Emil and Taylor, and their parents Sonia and Mark. Josibiah and his son Joseph came on one of those trips, where we made our way from Budapest to Prague, Vienna and Venice. We went with the Evans family to Hawaii, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Venice, and Stockholm. We walked the ancient pathway from Cambridge to Grantchester. Emil announced that for him there was no such thing as getting up too early, and every morning the two of us would meet in a hotel lobby and go out for long walks together. I took my camera. One morning in Budapest he asked me to take a photo of two people walking ahead of us and holding hands.

“Why?”

“Because they look happy.”

At last I could show off my city secrets. I was happy enough to drift for years lonely and solitary through strange cities, but it was more fun with the family. One quality the children had was the ability to feel at home anywhere, in restaurants, theaters, museums. They were attentive and absorbed. They had been well raised.

Those times seem more precious now that they’re in the past. I don’t walk easily anymore. When we were married I told Chaz that in 1987 I’d had a salivary tumor removed. Good Dr. Schlichter observed the surgery and told me, “They got it all. Every last speck.” But I was warned my cancer was slow-growing and sneaky, and might return years later. That’s what happened, and it set into motion all of my current troubles.

I mentioned how expert and exacting Chaz became in my care. Now I must tell you of her love. In the hospital, day after day, she was my staff of strength. In the rehabilitations she cheered me through every faltering step, and when I looked at a flight of three steps I was intended to climb, it was her will that helped me lift my feet. To visit a hospital is not pleasant. To do it hundreds of times is heroic.

The TV show was using “guest co-hosts” and Richard Roeper held down the fort. But after the first surgery failed and I nearly died, it must have been clear to her that my TV days were over. She never admitted it. She had faith, she encouraged me, her presence gave me strength. She brought my friends to see me. Studs Terkel came several times. Father Andrew Greeley was cheerful and optimistic. She brought McHugh and Mary Jo, Gregory Nava, Jon and Pamela Anderson, the mayor’s wife Maggie Daley, the actress Bonnie Hunt (who had once been an oncology nurse at Northwestern). Chaz had become friends with the healer Caroline Myss, and brought her to my bedside to evoke positive thoughts. I did not and do not believe in that kind of healing, but I see only good in the feelings it can engender. I am no longer religious, but every single day Chaz took my hand before she left and recited the 23rd Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer, and from this I took great comfort.

After I was allowed to return home for the first time, Chaz decided I was ready for the Pritikin Longevity Center near Miami. We’d been going to Pritikin, first in Santa Monica and then Florida, since before we were married, and their theories about diet and exercise became gospel to me (sometimes more in the breach than the observance). I had for years been an enthusiastic walker, but now, after rehabilitation, I was using a stroller and it was slow going.

I couldn’t eat the largely vegetarian diet at Pritikin, but Chaz knew the cooks would blend a liquid diet to supplement my cans of nutrition. She also informed me that I was going to walk, exercise, and get a lot of sunshine. Because it was painful to sit in most chairs, Pritikin found me a reclining chair that faced a big TV. I had brought along a pile of books. I cracked open the sliding doors and a fragrant breeze came in, and I would have been completely content to stay there just like that. It was not to be. Chaz ordered me on my feet for morning and afternoon walks, with my caregivers trailing along behind me with a wheelchair. I’d go as far as I thought I could, and Chaz would unfailingly pick out a farther goal to aim for. She was relentless.

In the gym everyday I cranked through 20 minutes on the treadmill and then worked out with weights and exercise bands. After the gym she took me outside to sit in the sun for half an hour. She explained how natural Vitamin D would help strengthen my bones, which were weakened during the muscular degeneration of weeks of post-surgical bed rest. I resented her unceasing encouragement. I was lazy. It was ever so much preferable to sit and read. But she was making me do the right thing.

She did it all over again after my next three tours through the Rehabilitation Institute. Four times I learned to walk again, and each time she took me to Pritikin or Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico, which I had grown to love. I parked the wheelchair for good, I was no longer using a stroller, I was walking, not quickly or for miles, but walking. And getting Vitamin D. At home, we took walks around the neighborhood and down to the Lily Pond in Lincoln Park. We began to go to all the screenings again. She found Dr. Mark Baker, an exercise therapist, to regularly work with me.

It must not have been the most pleasant thing in the world to trail along as I walked slowly. She must have wished we could still be taking our trips overseas. When she thought I was ready for it, she took me back to London and Cannes, and every autumn to the Toronto festival. I know that left on my own I would have stayed at home in my favorite Relax-the-Back chair. That I am still active, going places, moving, in good health, is directly because of her.

We planned all along to produce a show that would continue the Siskel & Ebert & Roeper tradition. Chaz did all the heavy lifting, the negotiations, the contracts. We were going to be the co-producers, but I told her she was born for the job. She repeatedly told me I needed to appear more on the show, even with my computer voice. My instinct was to guard myself. I can never be on television as I once was. She said, “yes, but people are interested in what you have to say, not in how you say it.” The point is not which of us in correct. The point is that she’s encouraging me. She has more faith in me than I do.

I sensed from the first that Chaz was the woman I would marry, and I know after 20 years that my feelings were true. She has been with me in sickness and in health, certainly far more sickness than we could have anticipated. I will be with her, strengthened by her example. She continues to make my life possible, and her presence fills me with love and a deep security. That’s what a marriage is for. Now I know. Excerpted from my memoir, “Life Itself.”

   Our flower girls were Gene and Marlene’s daughters, Kate and Callie.  

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

Premisnya kira-kira seperti ini: Greta Álvarez (Alícia Falcó yang menawan) percaya bahwa dia dilahirkan dengan tujuan – untuk menyelamatkan saudara perempuannya yang mengalami gangguan kekebalan, Lucy (Georgina Amorós). Tapi itu tidak berhasil, dan Lucy meninggal di usia awal dua puluhan, meninggalkan keluarga yang berduka yang harus mencari tahu seperti apa hidup ini ketika penyakit saudarinya yang sudah meninggal tidak lagi mengatur hari-hari mereka.

Pertunjukan dibuka setelah semua urusan kematian selesai, dengan Greta, ibunya (Laia Marull), dan ayahnya (Mario de la Rosa) terjebak dalam kesedihan karena mereka seharusnya meneruskannya. Kemudian datanglah orang asing yang tampan – Will Tucker (Pablo Álvarez yang sedang merenung) – dengan permainan dari alam kubur, berisi serangkaian tantangan yang diciptakan Lucy untuk membantu keluarganya memproses kehilangan mereka, dan mudah-mudahan, hidup dengan lantang dan berani.

Itu kasar dan berlebihan. Ini adalah seri yang penuh dengan cahaya keemasan dan pengaturan twee dari trailer Will yang nyaman hingga bar yang trendi namun tenang tempat dia bekerja. Namun ada banyak hal yang bisa dikatakan tentang kontur kesedihan. Sulit untuk tidak meneteskan air mata saat Greta memprosesnya – akhir dari kehilangannya dan bagaimana hal itu terjadi sepanjang hidupnya terasa nyata dan terlalu berat untuk ditanggung. Dan latarnya mencerminkan hal ini: rumahnya berantakan, dimana piring-piring yang tidak dicuci dan tisu-tisu yang dibuang mendominasi. Dia harus pergi untuk mencari pencerahan, tapi dia juga harus kembali untuk mengatasi kesedihannya hingga ke akar-akarnya.

Serial ini cerdas dalam menggambarkan tanggapan keluarga yang berbeda-beda sebagai hal yang valid. Ibunya menonton TV sepanjang hari dalam keadaan kesurupan, depresi berat. Ayahnya pergi bekerja dan tampak berfungsi, meskipun dia jelas-jelas menghindari keluarga dan emosinya. Greta, sementara itu, berusaha memproses kekalahannya melalui permainan Lucy. Dia awalnya enggan menerima bantuan kakaknya, berbicara dengan Will, atau berpartisipasi dalam terapi. Namun dia memercayai adiknya dan perlahan-lahan berkembang ke hubungan emosional yang lebih baik dengan kehilangannya, berkat kekuatan ikatan mereka.

Sayangnya, “Peta Kerinduan” tidak memiliki wawasan maupun keingintahuan terhadap kondisi laki-laki. Will tampil sebagai orang asing yang tampan dan misterius, dan itulah karakter yang paling dinamis. Di babak kedua, dia berbagi masa lalunya yang misterius, tetapi pengungkapannya tidak masuk akal, mengubahnya dari orang yang tertutup menjadi fantasi yang mustahil. Acara tersebut berargumentasi bahwa ada “dua keinginan” dan sebuah tragedi telah mengubah dirinya – namun transisi tersebut terlalu parah untuk dipercaya. Dan seri enam bagian ini hanya memberikan ungkapan sekilas sebagai penjelasan tentang bagaimana Will, yang tampak begitu sopan dan sensitif, bisa begitu tidak berperasaan di masa lalunya. Penonton hanya mempercayai khayalan bahwa interaksinya dengan saudara perempuan Álvarez dapat mengubah dirinya—dari cara dia berdiri hingga apa yang dia hargai—dengan cinta dan penerimaan mereka.

Itu murni fantasi, dan juga kekanak-kanakan. Episode pertama bersandar pada pendekatan remaja ini, menjadikan Greta pahlawan wanita pemberani di banyak film Disney, orang yang terlalu banyak bicara, tidak mengetahui keterbatasannya sendiri, tetapi entah bagaimana menyelesaikan masalahnya dengan akal sehat. Syukurlah, di jam kedua, “Peta Kerinduan” sudah mulai menjauh dari karakterisasi tersebut, membiarkan Greta merasakan dan mempertanyakan dengan cara yang sesuai dengan situasinya dan bukan impiannya.

Falcó melakukan pekerjaannya dengan baik di sini, bahkan ketika dia terjebak dengan serangkaian pilihan kostum yang aneh seperti poni yang buruk untuk masa lalunya dan masa depannya. Dia dengan gagah berani mengambil watak karakternya yang berani, menemukan kedalaman saat tulisannya menjadi lebih baik, dan menunjukkan transisi yang lambat saat Greta pulih. Dia juga memiliki chemistry yang sangat baik dengan Álvarez, yang cenderung memainkan tangannya secara berlebihan dan tidak mampu menyatukan karakternya yang retak menjadi manusia yang dapat dikenali.

Tetap saja, sulit untuk tidak mendukung wanita muda ini untuk mendapatkan semua yang dia inginkan—termasuk Will yang tampan, yang, di alam semesta ini, pasti tidak akan menyakitinya. Ini adalah pesta bagaimana Falcó bersinar dari dalam saat dia mulai membuat kemajuan, akhirnya membiarkan dirinya membuat pilihan untuk dirinya sendiri setelah lebih dari dua puluh tahun hidup demi saudara perempuan tercintanya. Hal ini juga berkaitan dengan keterkaitan kesedihan, betapa universalnya hal itu, meskipun kita masing-masing merespons secara berbeda. Duka yang dialami Greta tidaklah terlalu sentimental dan basi. Itu ditinggali.

Jadi meskipun perjalanannya terkadang terasa terlalu sulit, ada katarsis nyata di sini saat melihatnya mendapatkan kebahagiaan. Semoga kita semua sangat beruntung.

Seluruh seri diputar untuk ditinjau. Sekarang di Netflix.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

Saya menantikan untuk merayakan warisan George bersama orang-orang terkasih dan teman-temannya minggu ini. Kunjungannya akan diadakan mulai pukul 16.00 hingga 20.00 pada hari Kamis, 16 Juli, di Rumah Duka Leak and Sons, 7838 S. Cottage Grove Ave., dilanjutkan keesokan harinya dengan pemakamannya pada pukul 11.00 di Trinity United Church of Christ, 400 W. 95th Street. Layanan pemakaman akan disiarkan langsung di trinitychicago.org. Sebagai pengganti bunga, keluarga tersebut meminta agar sumbangan diberikan ke Chicago State University ( dan/atau The HistoryMakers (

Meskipun kami akan menghadiri Kebaktian Peringatan, kenangan saya tentang Tuan Johnson selama bertahun-tahun adalah betapa hidup, sopan, dan tajamnya dia dalam hal bisnis, hubungan antarmanusia, dan kehidupan itu sendiri! Itu termasuk awal tahun ini saat kami menjamu dia dan istrinya Madeline di Gala Festival Film Internasional Palm Springs di California. Dia sangat senang akhirnya menerbitkan memoarnya setahun sebelumnya (pada usia 97!). Dia mengatakan bahwa Tuhan membisikkan kepadanya bahwa sudah waktunya untuk menceritakan kisahnya. Dia terhubung dengan penulis Hilary Beard dan hasilnya adalah buku yang menghibur:Afro Sheen: Bagaimana Saya Merevolusi Industri dengan Aturan Emas, dari Soul Train hingga Wall Street.

Bukunya adalah inspirasi dan cetak biru untuk mewujudkan impian Anda dengan memiliki keyakinan pada diri sendiri, pada kewirausahaan kulit hitam dan dia menekankan, dengan mengikuti Aturan Emas. Ia sangat yakin bahwa kita harus memperlakukan orang lain sebagaimana kita ingin diperlakukan. Saya merasakan bahwa kesenangannya dalam menceritakan kisahnya bukanlah untuk mendatangkan kemuliaan atau perhatian bagi dirinya sendiri, namun untuk mendorong orang lain untuk mengejar impian mereka. Dan memang benar, di perhentian tur bukunya yang saya hadiri, saya memperhatikan bahwa di antara para peserta terdapat banyak pria dan wanita sukses yang mengaitkan kesuksesan mereka dengan dorongan (dan uang awal) darinya.

Perlu dicatat bahwa beberapa keluarga kulit hitam yang sukses di Chicago memiliki nama belakang Johnson, yang pada suatu waktu menimbulkan kebingungan. AdaKayu hitam/Jetpenerbit majalah John dan Eunice Johnson, dan dealer Cadillac terkemuka Al Johnson, antara lain. Namun pencapaian George selama hampir satu abad akan tetap menjadi mercusuar inspirasi bagi generasi mendatang.

Lahir pada tanggal 16 Juni 1927, di Richton, Mississippi, George memasuki dunia di mana peluang bagi orang kulit hitam Amerika sengaja dibatasi. Ketika dia baru berusia dua tahun, keluarganya bergabung dengan Migrasi Besar, menetap di Chicago untuk mencari janji yang diharapkan oleh banyak keluarga kulit hitam di Utara. George mempelajari nilai pekerjaan sejak dini. Dia menyemir sepatu saat masih kecil dan melakukan pekerjaan apa pun yang bisa dia temukan untuk membantu menghidupi keluarganya. Kenyataan finansial memaksanya untuk meninggalkan sekolah menengah sebelum lulus, namun hal itu tidak pernah mengurangi rasa ingin tahu atau ambisinya. Sebaliknya, mereka mempertajam instingnya. Dia belajar mengenali masalah, mendengarkan dengan cermat, dan melihat peluang yang tidak dilihat orang lain. Dan pada saat kematiannya, ia telah dianugerahi hampir 10 gelar doktor kehormatan dari berbagai universitas.

Setelah mendapatkan pengalaman bekerja untuk pengusaha legendaris Samuel B. Fuller, George memulai usahanya sendiri. Pada tahun 1954, dia dan istrinya, Joan Henderson—yang dia temui di sekolah menengah—mendirikan Johnson Products Company dengan $500. Sebagian dari jumlah itu adalah pinjaman sebesar $250 yang diberikan bank kepadanya untuk “membawa istrinya berlibur.” (Dia telah ditolak pinjaman sebesar itu untuk memulai bisnis.)

Film ini memiliki semua unsur kisah sukses klasik Amerika, namun apa yang membuat George luar biasa bukan hanya karena ia memulainya dengan modal yang sangat sedikit. Hal ini karena dia mengakui seluruh komunitas yang kebutuhannya terabaikan. Selama bertahun-tahun, konsumen kulit hitam diabaikan oleh produsen besar. Produk yang diformulasikan khusus untuk rambut hitam jumlahnya terbatas, dan iklan jarang mencerminkan kecantikan kulit hitam dengan bermartabat atau bangga. George memahami bahwa melayani pasar ini berarti lebih dari sekadar menjual sampo atau obat pelemas rambut. Ini berarti memberi tahu jutaan orang bahwa mereka penting.

Produk-produknya—termasuk Ultra Wave, Ultra Sheen, Afro Sheen, dan kemudian Classy Curl—menjawab kebutuhan praktis, namun produk-produk tersebut juga hadir pada momen budaya yang sangat penting. Ketika gerakan Black Is Beautiful mendorong orang Afrika-Amerika untuk menerima ciri-ciri alami mereka dan menolak standar yang diberlakukan selama puluhan tahun, Produk Johnson menjadi bagian dari penegasan identitas yang lebih besar. Iklannya tidak meminta warga kulit hitam Amerika untuk menginginkan definisi kecantikan menurut orang lain. Bisnis George tumbuh menjadi salah satu perusahaan milik orang kulit hitam paling sukses di Amerika, yang akhirnya mendominasi pasar perawatan rambut orang kulit hitam. Pada tahun 1971, perusahaan ini menjadi perusahaan milik orang kulit hitam pertama yang terdaftar di Bursa Efek Amerika. Hal ini lebih dari sekadar pencapaian finansial. Bagi banyak warga kulit hitam Amerika, hal ini merupakan bukti bahwa kepemilikan kulit hitam dapat berkembang di tingkat nasional, bahwa keunggulan dan ambisi bukan merupakan pengecualian melainkan sebuah harapan, dan bahwa bisnis yang berakar pada pelayanan komunitas kulit hitam dapat menjadi sebuah institusi.

Pengaruh George melampaui perdagangan jauh sebelum perusahaan-perusahaan Amerika menyadari pentingnya berinvestasi pada audiens kulit hitam. Johnson Products menjadi sponsor nasional pertama “Soul Train,” membantu mengubah apa yang awalnya merupakan program televisi lokal Chicago menjadi salah satu platform budaya paling berpengaruh dalam sejarah Amerika. Melalui musik, tarian, fesyen, dan kegembiraan, “Soul Train” memperkenalkan jutaan pemirsa kepada seniman kulit hitam dan kreativitas kulit hitam dengan cara mereka sendiri. Ia percaya peluang ekonomi tidak dapat dipisahkan dari hak-hak sipil. Meskipun demonstrasi dan peraturan perundang-undangan mengubah Amerika secara nyata, George memahami bahwa kepemilikan, lapangan kerja, akses terhadap modal, dan kemandirian ekonomi juga merupakan instrumen kebebasan. Karena mengalami diskriminasi dalam mendapatkan pembiayaan, ia kemudian membantu mendirikan Independence Bank of Chicago, menciptakan peluang bagi keluarga dan pengusaha kulit hitam yang sering kali mendapati lembaga keuangan tradisional tidak mau berinvestasi untuk masa depan mereka.

Jika ada benang merah yang mengalir dalam kehidupan George yang luar biasa, hal itu adalah bahwa ia secara konsisten membuka pintu-pintu yang pernah terpaksa ia ketuk sendiri. Dia membangun produk yang menegaskan identitas. Dia menciptakan perusahaan yang menciptakan peluang. Dia berinvestasi dalam budaya sebelum orang lain menyadari nilainya. Dan dia membangun institusi yang akan terus melayani masyarakat lama setelah dia mengundurkan diri.

Secara pribadi, saya sangat beruntung bisa mengenal tidak hanya George tetapi ketiga istrinya (yang bagian tengahnya tidak dimasukkan dalam sebagian besar upeti yang pernah saya baca). Ketiga istri itu cerdas, cantik, dan berprestasi. Tapi Joanlah yang memulai bisnis mereka dengan George dan dengan siapa dia memiliki empat anak yang cantik: Eric, Joan, John dan George E. Johnson, Jr. Joan dikagumi di komunitas Kulit Hitam. Kami berbagi kepercayaan di salon rambut tempat kami berdua menjadi klien mendiang Emory Jones.

Joan dan George bercerai setelah hampir empat dekade menikah. Namun seperti cerita dari dongeng, mereka kemudian menikah lagi pada tahun 1995, dan tetap demikian hingga dia meninggal pada tahun 2019. Namun, sebelum mereka kembali bersama, George menikah sebentar dengan Renée Derem, pendiri hubungan Sister-City Chicago di Paris. Saya ingat sekali menghabiskan waktu bersama pasangan di kedua kota tersebut.

Kemudian pada tahun 2022, George menikahi istri ketiganya, teman lama saya, Madeline Murphy Rabb yang sangat berprestasi. Madeline adalah seorang seniman, desainer, dan penasihat seni veteran yang pernah menjabat sebagai Direktur Eksekutif Kantor Seni Rupa Chicago. Selain sebagai seniman dan kurator, ia juga merupakan peraih Medali Perak dan Perunggu pada Pesta Olahraga Senior Nasional. Saya ingat George sangat terkesan dengan kecantikan dan atletis Madeline, yang ia tunjukkan melalui renang kompetitifnya yang terekam dalam film dokumenter pendek terkenal Luchina Fisher, “Team Dream.” Film ini memenangkan Penghargaan Ebert kami di Festival Film Ebertfest edisi 2023. Madeline juga salah satu wanita paling baik hati.

Bersama-sama George dan Madeline menjalani musim kehidupan yang banyak orang anggap tidak akan ada lagi di tahun-tahun berikutnya. Mereka bepergian, mengunjungi teman, dan berbagi petualangan. Ini adalah pengingat yang indah bahwa babak terakhir kehidupan tidak harus ditentukan oleh kemunduran. Mereka juga bisa ditandai dengan persahabatan, rasa ingin tahu, dan rasa syukur. Baru saja pada bulan November yang lalu, George dianugerahi Penghargaan Hak Sipil Edwin C. “Bill” Berry oleh Chicago Urban League. Dan itu hanya beberapa minggu sebelum kematiannya, menurut putranya Eric via Berita APbahwa Ruang Program Joan dan George Johnson didedikasikan untuk mereka di Pusat Kepresidenan Obama yang baru dibuka. Presiden Barack Obama menghadiri peresmian tersebut, begitu pula George, momen puncak kehidupan yang menjulang tinggi.

Ketika George menghembuskan napas terakhirnya pada usia sembilan puluh sembilan tahun, Madeline ada di sampingnya sambil memegang tangannya. Ada sesuatu yang pas dengan gambar itu. Seorang pria yang menghabiskan hampir satu abad membangun, mencipta, dan memberi, pada akhirnya dikelilingi oleh cinta. Sejarah akan mengingat George sebagai pebisnis perintis, wirausahawan visioner, dan salah satu tokoh paling penting dalam sejarah perusahaan Kulit Hitam. Gelar-gelar tersebut memang pantas didapatkan. Jauh sebelum “Keunggulan Kulit Hitam” menjadi bagian dari kosa kata kita sehari-hari, George diam-diam memahami maknanya. Produknya memenuhi rak-rak toko. Visinya memperluas wawasannya. Dan warisannya akan terus tumbuh dalam diri setiap pengusaha yang berani membayangkan masa depan yang belum dapat dilihat oleh orang lain.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

Dimainkan pada 16 Juli hingga 2 Agustus, Fantasia merayakan dekade ketiganya dengan segudang karya dari seluruh dunia, termasuk Tiongkok Wuxia gambar, komedi horor Kanada, dan dokumenter tentang segala hal mulai dari legenda VFX Steve Johnson hingga sejarah franchise Ultraman. Kami juga akan mendapatkan restorasi film seperti film aksi klasik Chow Yun-Fat “City War,” “Gozu” karya Takashi Miike yang aneh, dan “Pontypool” karya klasik Bruce McDonald tahun 2008.

Di antara tokoh-tokoh yang diumumkan untuk menerima penghargaan di Fantasia termasuk sutradara “Drive” Nicolas Winding Refn, yang film terbarunya (dan film pertamanya dalam satu dekade), “His Private Hell,” akan membuka festival tersebut; Legenda horor Jepang Takashi Shimizu (“Ju-On: The Grudge”) akan menerima Cheval Noir Career Achievement Award, bertepatan dengan pemutaran perdana dunia “Village of Eight Gravestones” (lebih lanjut tentang itu nanti) dan pemutaran perdana “The Mouths” di Amerika Utara. Festival ini juga akan menjadi tuan rumah pemutaran perdana film Jane Schoenbrun yang sangat ditunggu-tunggu, “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” di Kanada, serta “fragmen” berdurasi dua jam dari karya sinema trans yang inovatif (dan panjang) karya Louise Weard, “castration movie chapter iii: a fragmentary passing.”

Untuk informasi lebih lanjut tentang festival dan cara membeli tiket, kunjungi di sini. Sementara itu, jika Anda perlu merencanakan jadwal Anda, berikut adalah daftar judul praktis yang sangat kami sukai.

Orang Aneh Bagian II

Saat “Her Private Hell” membuka festivalnya, Fantasia akan menutupnya dengan film terbaru dari beberapa anak laki-laki lokal yang berhasil: “Freaks Part II” karya Zach Lipovsky dan Adam Stein, sekuel dari film tahun 2018 tentang masyarakat tersembunyi yang terdiri dari orang-orang dengan kekuatan super yang diburu oleh pemerintah yang tidak bersahabat. “Part II” mengikuti ibu dan anak dari film sebelumnya, Mary (“Amanda Crew dari Silicon Valley”) dan Chloe (Lorelei Olivia Mote), saat mereka melanjutkan pelarian dari pihak berwenang, menyembunyikan kekuatan dan identitas mereka untuk menjaga diri mereka tetap aman. Tapi Mary ingin membalas dendam, dengan mengincar petugas (Lili Taylor) yang membunuh anak pertamanya. “Freaks” pertama mengatasi anggaran sederhana dengan beberapa efek khusus yang sangat inventif, dan “Final Destination Bloodlines” membuktikan bahwa Lipovsky dan Stein sangat ahli dalam sensasi horor, jadi anggap saja kami duduk.

Orang Mati yang Mulia

Keluarga Adams adalah favorit Fantasia, dan untuk alasan yang bagus; film mereka sebelumnya, “Hellbender,” “The Deeper You Dig,” dan “Mother of Flies” (salah satu favorit saya tahun lalu) mengangkat diri mereka melampaui naungan tim pembuat film keluarga DIY menjadi karya horor rakyat yang benar-benar meresahkan. Kini, mereka kembali dengan “The Glorious Dead,” di mana seorang sheriff kota kecil dan wakilnya terbangun dan menemukan dunia yang tidak dapat dikenali, menyeramkan, dan jelas berdarah, dan penduduk kota yang semakin ditelan oleh rasa takut dan kemarahan. Harapkan banyak adegan lo-fi yang inventif, atmosfer yang memukau, dan beberapa isyarat yang sangat tepat waktu mengenai bagaimana rasanya tinggal di Amerika saat ini. Pikirkan “Mati Jahat – dington.”

Tempat Panas

Sutradara “The Lure” Agnieszka Smoczyńska kembali dengan film thriller fiksi ilmiah yang tentu saja menyentuh kegelisahan kita yang semakin besar terhadap AI. Dalam “Hot Spot”, dunia dikuasai oleh kecerdasan buatan, dan seorang detektif swasta (Noomi Rapace, yang tampaknya terlahir untuk para pembuat fiksi ilmiah tingkat menengah ini) mulai memecahkan sebuah pembunuhan, hanya untuk mendapati dirinya berada di tengah-tengah kelompok pemberontak yang mungkin bisa membebaskan umat manusia dari penguasa digital mereka. Tidak banyak yang dibicarakan mengenai hal ini, namun perpaduan antara sutradara dan materi (yang teriakan semuanya mulai dari Albert Pyun hingga “Blade Runner 2049”) menjadikan catnip mutlak untuk anjing fiksi ilmiah seperti diriku.

Dunia Kita yang Berkembang

Meskipun “Camp Miasma” adalah judul yang jelas untuk sinema queer dan trans di Fantasia tahun ini, selalu menyenangkan melihat penyihir horor trans yang produktif (dan pendeta Shoenbrun) Alice Maio Mackay juga melakukan triknya yang biasa. Entri tahun ini, “Our Effed Up World,” dibintangi oleh Jess McLeod dari “Camp Miasma”, Annapurna Sriram dari “Fucktoys”, dan Brandon Flynn dari remake “Hellraiser” sebagai sekelompok teman pemalas yang tiba-tiba ditugaskan untuk melawan invasi alien. Mengetahui kegemaran Mackay menggunakan genre untuk menyelidiki dinamika berantakan kelompok teman queer (lihat “The Serpent’s Skin” tahun lalu yang membuat saya terpesona), ini pasti menyenangkan.

Kerusakan Permanen

Pembuat film Kanada Seth A. Smith kembali ke Fantasia dengan cerita kriminal yang unik tentang seorang narapidana yang melarikan diri (“Calem MacDonald dari The Umbrella Academy”) yang mendapati dirinya dalam pertarungan keinginan dengan tuan tanah yang kejam (Stephen Dorff) saat dia mencoba mencuri “angsa emas” miliknya. “Tin Can” karya Smith dari tahun 2020 adalah sorotan Fantasia bagi saya, sebuah film thriller fiksi ilmiah paranoid yang suram tentang bahaya isolasi; Aku sudah lama penasaran apa yang akan dia lakukan selanjutnya.

Samurai dan Tahanan

Banyak film favorit festival sebelumnya yang akan diputar di Fantasia (sebutan terhormat lainnya yang tidak sabar untuk saya saksikan: “Blades of the Guardians” karya Yuen Wo-ping), tetapi sejak sambutannya yang meriah di Cannes (lihat ulasan kami), saya telah sedikit berusaha untuk merasakan film samurai/misteri pembunuhan Kiyoshi Kurosawa yang hebat tentang seorang

Para Vampir

Versi bahasa Spanyol dari “Dracula” tahun 1931 telah lama menjadi keingintahuan yang menarik: kru Spanyol mengambil gambar pada malam hari di lokasi yang sama dengan film vampir klasik Tod Browning yang digunakan pada siang hari. “Los Vampires” karya Craig Mitchell membuat kisah tersebut menjadi fiksi dengan cara yang sama seperti “Shadow of the Vampire” yang dilakukan “Nosferatu,” sebagai aktor Spanyol (“Lost” Henry Ian Cusick) yang membayangi aktor berbahasa Inggris (Thomas Kretschmann) yang menghitung setiap hari. Premis dan nada yang dijanjikan terasa seperti pujian yang sangat gila terhadap kompromi dan risiko yang melekat dalam penciptaan seni, khususnya di masa-masa awal Hollywood yang berantakan.

Desa Delapan Batu Nisan

Meskipun kembalinya J-horror “The Mouths” juga terlihat menarik, dari dua gambar Takashi Shimizu yang diumumkan tahun ini, saya tertarik pada horor rakyat yang menakutkan dari “Village of Eight Gravestones,” di mana seorang pemuda bernama Tatsuya mengunjungi desa tempat mendiang ibunya dibesarkan. Sepanjang jalan, dia dibantu oleh detektif pulp Jepang ikonik, Kindaichi, yang membantunya memecahkan misteri pembunuhan besar-besaran yang melanda desa tak lama setelah kedatangan Tatsuya. Hantu masa lalu dan cipratan darah masa kini pasti akan bertemu, itulah ruang kemudi yang Shimizu habiskan dalam kariernya untuk menguasainya.

Andalah Filmnya

Makoto Ueda menyukai cerita putaran waktunya; setelah menulis naskah untuk “Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes” dan “Rewrite” yang sangat cerdas, Ueda melangkah ke belakang kamera untuk memfilmkan film terbarunya, “You Are the Film.” Kali ini, twistnya berkisar pada dua orang yang berjarak tiga kilometer, yang harus saling membimbing secara real time melalui layar bioskop sebenarnya. Itu adalah premis yang inventif, paralel yang indah dengan interaktivitas bawaan antara subjek dan objek yang terjadi saat kita menonton film; Saya percaya Ueda untuk menjelajahinya dengan cara yang menyenangkan.

Zsazsa Zaturnnah

Berdasarkan buku komik Filipina dengan judul yang sama, “Zsazsa Zaturnnah” (atau judul lengkapnya, “Zsazsa Zaturnnah vs. Amazonistas of Planet X”) terasa seperti perayaan penuh warna dari salah satu super-queero terkemuka di Filipina. Di bawah pengawasan animator Filipina Avid Liongoren (“Hayop Ka!”, juga merestorasi dan memainkan festival tahun ini) dan studio Manila Rocketsheep. “Zsazsa” akan menceritakan kisah tentang penata rambut gay Ada, yang terkena meteor merah muda dan berubah menjadi pahlawan super montok—yang tentu saja harus melindungi desanya dari para Amazonista yang disebutkan di atas dan semua makhluk menakutkan yang dapat mereka kumpulkan. Semuanya tampak riuh, riuh, dan sangat flamboyan.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

In addition to representing how many years McElwee has taught at Harvard, 40 is significant for McElwee the documentarian: it’s the number of years that have elapsed since the release of his first feature, 1986’s “Sherman’s March,” one of cinema’s most inspiring examples of a director leaning into a behind-the-scenes disaster and making art from it. The story: McElwee received a $28,000 grant (in today’s money) to make a documentary retracing Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Civil War campaign through North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. He was about to start shooting when he and his girlfriend broke up, which devastated McElwee and made it hard for him to focus on the film’s original premise. 

In his own circuitous, digressive way, the result does get around to telling the story of Sherman’s march. But it’s intertwined with McElwee’s musings on the cultural aftershocks of the Civil War, the threat of nuclear extinction, and interviews with women. The latter mainly fall into one of two categories: new prospects that McElwee would like to hook up with, and former girlfriends that McElwee hopes can give him some perspective on why they didn’t work out as a couple. Sometimes McElwee’s interview subjects interview him back.

McElwee’s filmography flows into and out of “Sherman’s March.” “Charleen” (1977) focuses on his longtime friend Charleen Swansea, a schoolteacher and poet; his 1984 featurette “Backyard” is about his relationship with his father and the complex dynamics between Black and white people in the southern states. “Time Indefinite” (1993) is a direct continuation of “Sherman’s March” that touches on the death of McElwee’s grandmother and father, the sudden, shocking death of Charleen’s husband, and the filmmaker and his then-wife, Marilyn Levine, suffering a miscarriage. “Photographic Memory” (2011) was an unwitting prequel to the agonies depicted in “Remake,” detailing McElwee’s increasingly uneasy relationship with Adrian, by then a teenager who was developing his own interests, viewpoints, and spiky personality while struggling with the mental illness and drug addiction that would claim his life.

The totality of McElwee’s work brings to mind Robert Altman’s comment in 2006 while accepting a lifetime achievement Oscar: “To me, it’s just been one long movie.” I was blessed to talk to McElwee about the long movie of his life—in particular, the experience of grieving for Adrian off-camera and then struggling to translate his feelings into images and words. Shaken by watching “Remake,” I told McElwee about my own experience as a man who’s been widowed twice, and he sensitively referenced these losses periodically throughout our talk, which to me was like a small-scale, verbal equivalent of watching one of his wonderful films.

My condolences on the loss of Adrian.

Ross McElwee: Well, thank you. That’s a nice way to begin to talk about this. It’s been quite a journey getting through that. The decision to make a film about it was not easy.

As a father myself, I can’t imagine going through something like that.

That’s interesting to know that you have had experience raising kids, or maybe you’re still in the process. I’ve spoken with people who’ve really appreciated the film, both with and without children. The way people perceive the film seems to break down into two audiences.

What other patterns have you noticed in audience reactions?

Maybe it’s predictable, maybe it’s obvious, but I do think that as you get older, you’re more sensitive to these kinds of losses.

I’ll tell you a quick anecdote, which I haven’t shared with too many people, maybe nobody, but at the end of my film, there’s this peculiar choice of “El Erlkönig (The Elf King),” a famous 1782 ballad by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that Franz Schubert put to music as a song for the credits. The story is about a father holding his son, who’s very, very ill, as they race on horseback to reach a place where there might be help for the boy. And as he rides, his son sees monsters in the trees. 

The son keeps saying that he sees the Erlkönig, this sort of mythical king of the monsters. He tells his father, “It’s the Erlkönig, and he’s trying to take me to his kingdom of death.” And the father keeps saying things like, “No, my son—that’s only the mist in the trees that we’re running past—don’t worry!” 

The piece goes through several cycles of this, and finally, the Erlkönig grows increasingly upset with the child because the child won’t agree to go with him, and the monster starts threatening him. He tells the child, “Okay, now I have to take you with me,” and the son says, “Mein factor! Mein factor! Mein factor!” My father, my father, my father. The father finally pulls up to a place where he can get some medical attention for his son, still holding his son, and he looks down, and the son is dead. 

I mean, even telling you the story…It sort of…[Long pause] I get a little choked up just telling that story.

The story adjacent to that is: I knew that poem [set to music] from a college course decades ago. It always stayed with me because it was really vibrant, written in a way that lets you hear the horse’s hoofbeats as it tries to get the father and son to their destination in time. It’s really beautifully constructed, the whole thing. You know, I wasn’t weeping the first time I heard the music or anything. I wasn’t thinking of my brother and my father. For a while, I didn’t quite know why that song stayed with me. 

Then suddenly I realized it was because my father, who was a doctor, also had an experience like that, where his son—my brother—was injured, and it turned out he was injured mortally, and my father was out in the wilderness somewhere and couldn’t get help in time. And that’s why the story of the Erlkönig stayed with me for so long. Then, at a certain point after my son died, I realized that turned out to be true for me, too.

This film is having its commercial release in 2026, almost 10 years after Adrian’s death. What made you decide that enough time had elapsed to address that loss as an artist, after spending a decade trying to process it as a dad?

It is a distinction that needs to be made. The dad part of me could never come to terms, I guess. 

Maybe you know some of this yourself, after what you’ve been through with the double death of your first wife and your second wife: there’s a thing that people say to me, this phrase, ”Well, at least you had”—in my case—“twenty-six good years with him before he died.” When they say this, I don’t reply; I just nod my head. 

And you know, they say things like “Memories are so important, and they will sustain you through this.” Joan Didion wrote two books about losing people: The Year of Magical Thinking, about losing her husband, and Blue Nights, about the loss of her daughter soon after that. In Blue Nights, someone tells her,’“You have your wonderful memories,” and she says something to the effect of, memories are the things that I no longer cherish, or no longer need. They’re too painful. I think that was really my situation for a while.

What was it like processing Adrian’s loss from a father’s perspective?

The way I got through it was to first go through a long process of doing nothing. No writing, no thinking about a film or anything. I thought about the wording Joan Didion used: that memories are the things we don’t want to remember.

I didn’t quite answer your original question, though, which was how I finally got over the part of the grieving dad to become the grieving artist. I think I had to do it in stages. One stage was that I hired an assistant to go through my films, select only those in which Adrian had appeared, and choose one of two still frames from each film that featured him. I just wanted the still frames, the frame grabs. I wanted to see if I could begin writing about the still frames without breaking up and being unable to go any further, which is what happened to me when I tried looking at home movies: I just couldn’t do it because they were moving. 

This was something different, though. The still frames gave me a little bit of objectivity. And I wrote paragraphs to accompany each still frame. There were seven of them altogether. Doing that helped tremendously, because I got to see that I could somehow eventually come around to being able to do a film featuring home movies in which Adrian had appeared, and scenes from my feature films in which he’d appeared, if necessary. 

After that, I started going back to the archive and choosing moments with him that I’d filmed when he was a child, piecing them together into a kind of timeline and using that as the basis for the film.

About those paragraphs you wrote to go with the still frames: what were they like? Did you make the text merely descriptive? Or did it spin off into other areas?

It went off in other areas. It was descriptive, giving context to each case, but I also had to start dealing with my emotions because I was thinking, “My emotions are probably going to end up playing a role in this film as voiceover narration,” which helped me get to that point.

There’s a bit of narration that says, “My family life had been the lens through which I tried to make sense of the world around me.” That made me wonder if, at this point in your life, having lost so many family members to natural and unnatural causes, you are concerned that the lens is gone? Or at least harder to use, or harder to focus?

The answer is surely yes, but maybe for more than one reason. One is what you say: it’s just emotionally very, very difficult for me to think of ways to creatively reckon with images of people who are no longer here. But also, as I’m getting older and older, I think I’m losing some of my libido to go out and film the world, which is kind of a sad thing. I don’t know that I have the desire or energy to continue undertaking these journeys into the real world, whatever that means these days. I’m not feeling entirely comfortable with asking other people to reveal themselves to me when I’m holding a camera. 

Now, this could all change. I’m still very much in the throes of living and working on the distribution of “Remake,” the film I just finished. I think when I’m all done, I can take a deep breath, reconsider everything, and make another film—one that actually does allow me to use that lens that you just referred to as a way to see the world

I was struck by the particular words used in Adrian’s death notice. It says “Adrian R. McElwee, 27, passed away on December 24. 2016, after a long illness.” There was a time when most people would wonder what kind of physical illness: cancer, pneumonia, multiple sclerosis. But it refers to mental illness generally, and to addiction, which is increasingly thought of as a category of mental illness.

As recently as 10 or 15 years ago, a notice for someone like Adrian would have had a headline that either obliquely communicated the cause of death or omitted it entirely. What do you think about all this?

I think now that those two terms, mental illness and addiction, are being described and perceived today much more readily than in the past. I’m not quite sure what moved my former wife to describe it in the way that she did, but we were very aware that he’d had mental health issues. We spent a lot of time helping him find therapists and work with psychiatrists. He went away to wilderness camps that dealt with substance abuse issues. I think if this [event] were happening now, in 2026, instead of 2016, it would have been possible for [the death notice] to be even more forthcoming from the very beginning about the issues involved in his death. 

It all happened so quickly, too. Suddenly, there was a need to hold a funeral service and post something. And to be honest, I don’t even remember how it all came about. I’m not even sure I was able to read what was written before it was published. It was just so complicated. 

It’s interesting what you did, going back to that death notice. Adrian himself was very much interested in the whole phenomenon of addiction and left behind footage that proves it. He has lots of footage that he shot of his friends experimenting with these opioid drugs, and you know [from the film] that opioids led to heroin and then fentanyl, which of course is what Adrian got in trouble with. So I think it would be described differently if it were an obituary that was written these days. 

You could probably hear me stammering and stuttering as I talked to you. I find it amazing that we’ve been traveling with the film for almost nine months, and that still happens. You’d really think that by now it would have become very simple for me to talk about this more eloquently and in a more flowing way. But something happens when I start talking about Adrian’s death. I can feel the constriction in my throat. It’s just very, very hard for me to do, as you well know.

People constantly tell you it’s unhealthy or abnormal to carry a wound like yours around for the rest of your life. Some of the greatest poetry in English, by poets such as Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and John Donne, is about loss and grief. In the 1800s, someone who had suffered a loss like yours might have visited their loved one’s grave every week and left a flower there, and no one in their circle would’ve judged them negatively for doing it. 

Did you, by any chance, read George Saunders’ book Lincoln in the Bardo?

No, I haven’t.

Oh, you should. I mean, that’s exactly what it’s about! President Lincoln just can’t help himself in going back to the tomb of his son, who died when he was a child. It’s largely fictionalized, but it’s about the phenomenon that you’re talking about. I read that book early on while trying to work my way through the grieving process and create something. It was very useful for me to read and understand what was going on with Lincoln. 

It’s also unexpectedly amusing in places. Saunders creates these fictional people who are writing articles that appear in local papers, with very florid descriptions of the loss of the president’s son and how that’s affecting him and his family.

There’s a moment in “Sherman’s March” where the camera is pointed at you in a medium shot. You’re just sitting in a chair with a window behind you, and you say, “My father’s asleep upstairs. I think he already has enough questions about the validity of my film project without seeing me dressed up like this.” I wonder, in the 1980s, did you know any other people who were filming themselves that way? Do you feel like one of the founders of that form of expression?

There were certainly other people doing it. In fact, one of my film school teachers was one of those people, and I was greatly influenced by him. His name was Ed Pincus, and he made portraits of his family. He had a large impact on me and other filmmakers. There was a small colony of us, mainly in Boston and Cambridge, who were making those kinds of movies. Half a dozen people, maybe. We all encouraged each other foolishly to keep doing it. I persisted because it was something I felt comfortable doing.

But it also was very important to me to be sure that the films, certainly the early films, featured other people, because otherwise you ran the risk of something being really narcissistic and self-centered, and that would never work as a movie. It needed expansiveness to strive for some sort of universality.

But now it seems like everybody’s doing it. And you’re right, selfie-making has become an international phenomenon. I hope my films weren’t a catalyst for that happening. I would be very disappointed in us as a nation if that happened because of my filmmaking. 

Of course, there are differences between how most people make [selfie videos] and how I do them. For one thing, most of theirs are over in 25 seconds or whatever, where I really give the time in all of my films to let whatever version of reality I happen to encounter and alter with my filming to take as long as it needs to sort itself and explain itself. Even that monologue you just mentioned: I think that was like two or three minutes long, an unedited single shot. So, in a way, if I helped create or help launch the selfie revolution, I was continuously undermining it at the same time.

In “Sherman’s March,” there’s a scene where you’re filming your first meeting with a prospective date. Your friend Charlene, who introduced the two of you, intervenes and says, “Would you stop? Would you stop? This is important. This is not art. This is life.” What do you think about Charlene’s warning today, 40 years later? Where is the divide? Is there a divide?

Are you asking me if the whole concept of trying to film a version of your own reality is no longer a valid pursuit?

No, I’m curious to hear your interpretation of what Charlene said to you. The implication is that if a personal moment is really important, you should put the camera down.

That’s a very urgent phrase that Charlene tossed up, and there was nothing rehearsed about it—it just unfolded before the camera. She was really sort of upset with me for doing [“Sherman’s March”] but also highly amused by it. And, having taught poetry in schools for many, many years, Charlene was aware of what art can do and of its importance. So I think there’s an ironic implication in her juxtaposing those two possibilities in the same statement, but it is kind of a clarion call for caution, because you can overdo it one way or the other with a camera when you’re trying to live your life.

Can you really live your life when you’re filming it at the same time? 

Good question. I think about it all the time: This is not art, this is life. There are times when you should put the camera down, stop filming, and deal with what you have to do in order to live your life. So I think there’s validity to what she says.

When I’m watching iPhone footage of somebody who’s caught in, let’s say, a war zone, or a tsunami, I think, “It’s so stupid that they’re filming this! They could be killed!”, but also, “Wow, we’re so fortunate to have this footage to look at, because it shows us what it feels like to be in that situation.”

Yes, I think both things are true. They could be killed, and it’s pretty amazing that they’re getting this footage. And then there’s also the question of whether you have the right to stick your camera in somebody’s face as they’re going through some traumatic event, or have just been through a traumatic event, and expect them to be able to respond?

I made a film called “Six O’Clock News,” which asks those questions as I travel across the country. That was one of the things that set my journey in motion across the country: how do people deal with these tragedies, and how in the world does television think it has the right to stick a camera in their face and ask these questions? So I went out and did it myself. But I broke the ice by allowing the TV camera crews to sort of do the dirty work of finding the person who was willing to talk to a camera, obviously, because I would never have known anything about them, but then I’d go interview them a few weeks later to see where their lives were now. 

By the way, on that film, I think I was motivated by the fact that I had just lost my father, and so I’d had my own grieving period and got through that. I never totally left it behind. But was able to move forward with making a film. How do other people deal with their losses? That was the question that motivated “Six O’Clock News.”

What sorts of reactions have you heard from people who have seen “Remake” and have themselves lost a child?

A few people have come up to me after screenings and talked about that experience. Invariably, they’re weeping, and then I start weeping too, and it’s kind of a mess. I learned pretty early on that I should vacate the theater. But I feel bad about that because one of the things I’ve always enjoyed about showing films—my previous films, anyway—was interacting with individuals in the audience who had just seen the film. To avoid that entirely would be to deny [myself] that important experience. So it still seemed necessary to do it sometimes.

As for the people who have come up and talked to me…I mean, it’s, it’s very difficult. Everybody’s loss is, in some ways, similar and, in others, absolutely unique. I guess I found it supportive of my filmmaking that they felt the need to discuss something similar and deeply tragic that had happened in their own lives with the filmmaker. 

I do hope maybe that something could be done once this year passes and we’re not doing live screenings anymore, of offering the film to groups of people who’ve lost family members or loved ones to addiction, so they could then go out and talk about the process of dealing with what they’ve been through. There are already groups like that. They exist and have existed for many years. But maybe films like this can also play some role. It’s still too early for me to know.

I think what I’m bringing to people is a sense of solace. I can never make the pain go away, any more than they can make it go away from their own lives. But the film gives them the sense that they’re not alone, that there are other people who’ve been through this, too. All of that, I think, is worth doing.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

Meskipun tidak mengherankan jika streamer seperti Netflix ingin mencoba menata ulang film klasik ini untuk generasi baru, kebangkitan atau reboot apa pun harus melalui garis tipis antara menghormati apa yang telah terjadi sebelumnya dan mengambil jalurnya sendiri. Kabar baik: Penggambaran ulang “Little House on the Prairie” dari streamer memahami tugasnya, dan hasilnya adalah drama delapan episode yang cukup menyenangkan yang lebih dari sekadar terlihat, tanpa pernah benar-benar menantang penontonnya atau terlalu memperumit penggambarannya sendiri tentang kehidupan di perbatasan Amerika.

Berdasarkan buku ketiga dalam seri novel Wilder, “Little House” mengikuti keluarga Ingalls saat mereka meninggalkan Big Woods di Wisconsin dan melakukan perjalanan ke Kansas untuk mencari awal baru di Amerika Barat yang terus berkembang. Berbekal selebaran yang menjanjikan tanah gratis, Charles (Luke Bracey) optimis dengan masa depan keluarga, meskipun istrinya, Caroline (Crosby Fitzgerald), dan putrinya, Mary (Skywalker Hughes) dan Laura (Alice Halsey), sedih meninggalkan kehidupan lama mereka.

Sesampainya di wilayah yang diberi nama Kemerdekaan, keluarga tersebut menetap, melawan beberapa serigala CGI yang mengerikan, dan membangun rumah untuk musim dingin saat mereka mengenal tetangga baru dan berbagai warga kota lainnya yang juga mengejar ide mereka sendiri tentang impian Amerika yang baru. Suasananya sangat menyehatkan, pemandangannya hampir bermandikan sinar matahari. Dalam banyak hal, ini adalah “Rumah Kecil” melalui Instagram, dan cerita acaranya sebagian besar merupakan peristiwa di permukaan di mana keluarga menghadapi berbagai tantangan dan kemenangan atas tantangan tersebut melalui kekuatan cinta dan komunitas.

Agar adil, versi Netflix memang berupaya sedikit memodernisasi materi sumbernya, menambahkan beberapa perspektif segar yang diperlukan ke dalam cerita klasik dan mengatasi beberapa elemen yang lebih bermasalah. Pemukim kulit hitam mempunyai peran penting dalam ekosistem ekonomi kota yang lebih besar, termasuk sebagai dokter (Jocko Sims) dan pemilik toko kelontong (Barrett Doss).

Perempuan di Independence juga mempunyai peran yang lebih besar, mulai dari istri eksekutif kereta api kaya (Mary Holland) yang angkuh dan pekerja keras hingga seorang janda yang jelas-jelas non-tradisional (Rebecca Amzallag) yang mengenakan celana panjang dan menghargai kebebasan pribadinya. Dan “Rumah Kecil” ini menegaskan bahwa keluarga Ingalls—dan ratusan pemukim lain yang sama seperti mereka—datang ke Kansas untuk menetap di tanah yang bukan milik mereka dan, secara teknis, tidak dapat diambil alih.

Berbeda dengan serial TV aslinya, di mana Osage hanya hadir dalam episode percontohannya, suku tersebut memiliki peran utama sepanjang musim, dan acara tersebut sengaja menjadikan tetangga Ingalls, keluarga Mitchell, sebagai semacam cermin Pribumi bagi keluarga kulit putih kota, lengkap dengan seorang putri muda yang dewasa sebelum waktunya (Wren Zhawenim Gotts) yang menjadi sahabat Laura. Namun, meskipun semua ini merupakan perubahan yang disambut baik, “Little House” ini bukanlah remake yang bertujuan untuk mengguncang pepatah atau menyimpang jauh dari tema tradisional dan estetika pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps yang membuat seri aslinya begitu populer. Keluarga adalah yang terpenting. Ketahanan diperlukan. Dan komunitas adalah satu-satunya cara untuk bertahan hidup.

Ya, klan Ingalls menghadapi banyak kemunduran, mulai dari serangan binatang buas dan masalah keuangan hingga wabah demam yang melumpuhkan. Namun tidak satu pun masalah mereka pernah terasa juga berbahaya atau berlangsung selama itu. Semuanya sangat bersih, hewan yang hilang selalu ditemukan, dan tulang yang patah sembuh dengan baik tanpa membuat siapa pun menjauhi pekerjaan rumah mereka lebih lama dari yang diperlukan. Bahkan kecemburuan kecil antar saudara dapat diselesaikan dengan cukup cepat, dan pada dasarnya tidak ada masalah yang tidak dapat diselesaikan dengan menyanyikan lagu bersama atau bermain musik biola di malam hari.

Jika Anda mencari sesuatu yang mendekati gambaran realistis tentang sulitnya menjalani kehidupan di alam liar, ya. Ini bukan pertunjukan itu. Di sisi positifnya, para penggemar versi orisinal pasti akan merasa lega bahwa reboot ini bukanlah konsep ulang yang kelam dan berpasir seperti yang mungkin ditakuti banyak orang. Tapi “Little House” memainkannya dengan sangat aman dalam pilihan cerita sehingga tidak pernah terlalu menarik.

Yang patut disyukuri, pertunjukan ini indah untuk dilihat, penuh dengan pemandangan indah, pemandangan indah, dan matahari terbenam yang indah. Dan karakter-karakternya tetap familiar, hanya diberi corak dan lapisan baru. Caroline dan Charles diperlakukan sebagai sosok yang sepenuhnya terbentuk dan berada di luar arketipe sederhana “Ma” dan “Pa”, dan keduanya diperbolehkan mempertanyakan apakah mereka benar-benar dimaksudkan untuk hidup di perbatasan.

Sedihnya, acara tersebut tidak banyak membahas masalah-masalah yang sering disinggung keluarga di Wisconsin, atau ketegangan yang masih ada antara keluarga Caroline dan suaminya. Bracey dan Fitzgerald memiliki chemistry yang hangat dan dapat dipercaya, dan Warren Christie memberikan penampilan pendukung yang solid sebagai tetangga bermasalah dan veteran Perang Saudara yang pada dasarnya membekas dalam keluarga Ingalls. Namun bintang sebenarnya dari serial ini adalah Halsey, yang, pada usia sepuluh tahun, mencuri perhatian seluruh pertunjukan.

Setiap remake “Little House” secara alami akan hidup dan mati oleh Laura-nya, dan Halsey adalah orang yang menyenangkan, gagah, dan berani dengan cara yang kadang-kadang terasa. juga modern, namun tetap menawan sepanjang masa. Mengingat tugas yang seringkali tanpa pamrih untuk berperan sebagai kakak perempuan yang lebih bertanggung jawab (baca: membosankan), Hughes menganggap dirinya sebagai seorang Maria yang mencoba menavigasi masa dewasanya sendiri—Mencintai seorang anak laki-laki! Menginginkan hidupnya sendiri!—walaupun keadaan menghalanginya untuk menjadi mandiri.

“Little House on the Prairie” dari Netflix adalah jenis remake yang pada dasarnya dirancang di laboratorium untuk menarik pemirsa seluas mungkin. Itu belum tentu merupakan kritik—pengalaman menonton pertunjukan tersebut sangat menyenangkan. Namun sulit untuk tidak bertanya-tanya seperti apa versi pertunjukan yang tidak terlalu agresif…memadai ini.

Kedelapan episode disaring untuk ditinjau. Tayang perdana 9 Juli di Netflix.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

That’s the tonal tightrope that “Maddie’s Secret” (and Early) walks: the film sits somewhere between sincere pastiche of the woman’s pictures of the 1950s and the NBC TV movies of the week (like the Meredith Baxter Birney-starring “Kate’s Secret,” from which “Maddie’s” borrows several core concepts and plot beats) and the camp irreverence of John Waters. In the film, Maddie is a thirtysomething woman struggling to balance her newfound notoriety as a food influencer with the eating disorder that has plagued her since her youth; along the way, we just so happen to get jokes about trendy condiments like Fly By Jing and Conner O’Malley as an unhinged producer for a Bon Appetit-like food content mill.

But then, “Maddie’s Secret” gives way to its protagonist’s emotional fragility, and her attempts to gain a sense of control over her life even as everyone around her—from best friend Deena (frequent Early collaborator Kate Berlant) to her husband Jake (a supportive, sweaty thicc hunk played by Eric Rahill)—land her in a rehab facility for adults suffering from eating disorders. Even there, she deals with the wacky quirks of her fellow addicts (including Vanessa Bayer) alongside surprisingly probing conversations about the nature of disordered eating.

It’s a curious project for the Nashville-born Early, 38, who started out in stand-up before landing standout guest roles in shows like “Broad City” and “Difficult People.” Not long after that, he starred for four seasons of HBO’s “Search Party” as Elliott, the flamboyant, selfish gay mess who was frequently willing to sell out his values for another crumb of notoriety. Add to that Terry Goon in Theda Hammel’s cult COVID-era movie “Stress Positions,” and Early has proven his penchant for self-absorbed characters on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

In Maddie, Early finds a new evolution of those roles, channeling his love for the numerous films that influenced his debut into every thread of this picture. Squint hard enough, and you’ll see the flamboyant fight for fame in Paul Verhoeven’s “Showgirls”; the psychosexual mother-daughter drama of Hitchcock’s “Marnie”; virtually every role Divine ever played, but chiefly in Waters’ melodrama satire “Polyester.” The bra fits, so Early wears it.

Shortly after the film’s wide release, Early sat down with RogerEbert.com to talk about his relationship to his deepest media references (and his relationship to our relationship to them), the way his film talks about food, and how melodrama can sometimes bring out our deepest, most painful truths.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Some spoilers ahead for the end of “Maddie’s Secret.”

This is a film deeply steeped in reference, a recurring marker throughout your career—from lip-syncing in “The Characters” to shot-for-shot remakes of “Showgirls.” You seem to have such a unique relationship to reference, and I wondered how you, as a creator, work to go beyond reference and turn it into something new?

You know, I don’t know. It’s kind of an unconscious instinct I just end up doing. I think I’m a very devotional person and artist, and part of why people are devotional is that you lose yourself in the act of devotion to another person, a piece of work, a being. That’s very appealing, but it’s also an illusion. In the case of “Maddie’s Secret,” I thought by doing this kind of “Supermarket Sweep” approach to reference and pastiche, just grabbing at anything that excited me and throwing it in, I guess I felt protected. That I was making something so far out of the realm of me.

It almost feels like, if you’re grabbing from a gumbo of references and tones, you have a security blanket. “Maddie’s Secret” doesn’t have to live or die on how well it emulates “Kate’s Secret” or “Showgirls.”

Yes, certainly with the budget level I had. I would never be able to truly emulate some of the more…well-funded references. But I quickly realized, as I was writing the movie, that through referencing all these things, I kind of ended up leaking out all over the place. It was surprisingly personal in ways I couldn’t even explain, and still can’t. I really thought I was getting away with it; I thought I was making a totally safe, leaning tower of camp. But actually, it’s a profoundly personal piece of work.

That makes sense for people who love film, media, and culture—in a way, we sort of are the product of those influences. For this project, you’ve been able to wear those influences on your sleeve by talking about the films that inspired “Maddie’s Secret” and even programming some of them at places like Metrograph. What’s it like to get the chance to use this movie as a showcase for the things that you love?

It’s very nice… I get a little frustrated with how much the media ecosystem is obsessed with reference; it feels a little surveillance-y sometimes, the Letterboxd thing of “What are your four favorites?”, the Criterion Top 10, what do you pick in the Criterion Closet? Interviews these days seem to be very focused on references. This is ultimately a net positive, mind you; I think there’s a cinephilia in the air that is driving people to older movies, and that’s really cool, and to my movie as well. But I get a little….

And the thing is, I’m such a willing participant in it because I love talking about the movies I love, and I want people to see some of the ones I feel are underseen. I fall right into the trap, and I don’t think it’s all bad. I want to be very clear. But there’s this weird kind of gamifying or math-equation approach we’re trying to take with the references, where we’re not also acknowledging the fundamental mystery of what we’re doing or making. It’s a weird trap I find myself in right now.

But the truth is that I love that I’ve gotten to program these things. The Alamo Drafthouse let me program a few movies as “Maddie” inspo, and American Cinematheque did too. The fact that I got to put “The Brady Bunch Movie” on the big screen, are you kidding? That’s my life.

You mentioned that so much of you came out of this process, and I wonder how that translates to your relationship to Maddie as a character. What was it in the soul of her that you really wanted to inhabit? There’s this camp element, of course, but there’s a sincerity that comes with knowing her struggle, even if the stuff around her is a little over-the-top.

At the end of the day, I’m a deeply feeling, schmaltzy kind of person; to quote Deena, “It’s cool that you care.” And then Maddie goes, “It’s pathetic!” That’s the two sides of me, you know? I care, and I’m embarrassed that I care. So I try to layer on, I don’t know how many layers of irony, to mitigate the caring—to make less of a firehouse of sincerity and intensity. So I chose an archetype and a sensitive issue to work from, I think. This all moved so fast that it really felt like I didn’t know what I was doing.

But as time went on, and the more distance I got from it, I think I deliberately chose something so hot-button. It’s not relevant, of course; people have been talking about bulimia since the ’90s. But it is sensitive. I knew the only way through was to approach it with total commitment and sincerity. So, without realizing it, I created a project where I would be at the proverbial gunpoint and tap into the part of me that is a deeply feeling person who cares and is very sentimental.

I think that’s what modulates the tone of “Maddie’s Secret,” especially in the scenes between Maddie and Deena. I’m curious how your longstanding collaboration with Kate Berlant informed those two characters, especially Deena, who sits between Maddie’s sincerity and a more overt parody of these kinds of pictures.

Those two sides of Kate are so integrated; there’s the broadness, the physical comedy, her proficiency in clowning. Then there’s the wetness of her eyes; there are so many moments in this movie when she looks at Maddie, and she’s like a child. I don’t know, I think her performance elicits such big laughs, which is so necessary for this movie to balance out so much of my trackiness. But at the same time, her performance is so full of longing.

I’ve always been of the school that likes expressive performances—not because I like fakeness or artificiality, but because I actually know those people. I’m one of them. I had the great displeasure of seeing some interview I did to promote this movie this morning, and I saw myself roll my head back and laugh so heartily at something that was not funny. I saw myself do that, and thought, oh, you poor baby, why are you laughing so hard? Who are you trying to please?

I know so many people and friends like that, and Kate does it with total abandon in this movie. But it’s all balanced by these tiny flickers of pain and humanity.

There’s a pathos to her, too, because of this unrequited yearning for Maddie that she lets take her so far in these extreme directions.

Deena breaks my heart, and so does Kate’s performance.

One of the other more presentational elements in the film is these dance sequences at the queer gym, which obviously have a lot of “Showgirls” in there. I’m curious about those, because they go so far beyond the gym movement classes in “Kate’s Secret” that clearly inspired them, from this very severe, theatrical movement to the expressive camerawork. Talk to me about that tonal tightrope you had to walk.

Dance is so amazing; if you’re like me, and you write dialogue that is so blunt, you find that dance can express the inexpressible. It’s also very efficient, and it’s such a quick path to feeling. I knew I was working in a very blunt, pedestrian, low-culture style, and I was missing this dreamlike or expressive element. I didn’t want to so rigidly say I was doing a parody of a TV movie. So I was excited when I realized there could be a narratively motivated five- to eight-minute dream ballet at the center of this movie. Like in “Oklahoma!”

Of course, it’s absurd, but queer dance classes are a real thing. There are queer gyms in LA, and when Deena says, “It’s radically inclusive, no toxic gym bro stuff,” that is directly lifted from the website of queer gym. I have friends who attend these classes; I’ve seen footage of them leaning into vogue-inflected choreography. It’s all in the name of cardio, but it’s not as pragmatic as an aerobics class. There’s this other level of self-acceptance, almost like social justice kind of thing. Anyway, it’s actually real.

I have to imagine it was exciting for you, as a filmmaker, to get the chance to work both in the dance sequences and, more broadly, to find creative ways to hold and move the camera. I’m even thinking of some of the early scenes at Gourmaybe, where long tracking shots follow you and Deena, and even dolly around you to a comically dizzying degree.

I worked with Max Lackner, an incredible cinematographer. This is his first feature, and he’s a friend of mine; it’s a beautiful relationship that I hope will last forever. Because of our amateurishness, we were really ambitious—maybe if we were more experienced, we could have convinced ourselves not to be so visually expressive. But because our budget made that hard, we naively, like Nomi Malone herself, were like “why not? Let’s make this look like ‘Showgirls’!”

We had a gigantic whiteboard where we broke down every scene and tried to distill each one into a single key word, so every scene felt like it had a very clear aesthetic or tonal goal. The first word in the first scene was “horse!” because she’s jogging, and we wanted to be off to the races. The style was always in service of the larger pacing, and this feeling of getting on a train and it not stopping until you’re careening off the cliff.

Maddie’s relationship with food is also complicated by her work pressures at Gourmaybe, which lets you kind of rib at the kind of programmatic, performative way that a lot of food creators talk about food—even the way Maddie would rattle off trendy ingredients and describe a dish in this formulaic manner, even in casual conversation, is really fascinating. What’s your relationship to that school of food culture?

I like that kind of food. I go to the places they go, and I shop at the places they shop. I’m right at the epicenter of it here in LA, and when I’m in New York, too. Even where I’m from, in Nashville, they’ve become very orange wine-y. I’ve passively absorbed it through ironic consumption.

Plus, it gives Maddie job pressures that Kate of “Kate’s Secret” doesn’t have, because she’s just trying to survive as a mom and deal with an emotionally unavailable, potentially philandering husband. Maddie, meanwhile, has no kids and a supportive husband in Jake; one curious deviation from “Kate” is that Jake is the perfect gentleman to Maddie, to the point that it’s stifling.

To me, what that’s about is that, by presenting this angelic image to the world and hiding these darker parts of herself in her self-presentation, Maddie inspires a kind of simplistic devotion that proves unsustainable. If she’s perfect, she’s gonna have Deenas and Jakes in her life go, “You’re perfect.”

And there’s pressure to maintain that perfection.

Yeah. Maddie plays a huge part in what’s wrong with those dynamics.

It’s that need to curate an impossible version of yourself to appease people.

Maddie reminds me of another character you’ve played recently: Terry Goon in “Stress Positions.” They’re both such inwardly drawn characters who are riddled with anxiety. What draws you to roles like that?

Here’s me saying “I don’t know,” while I bite my nail. [Laughs.] I don’t know, really. I think the truth is both Terry and Maddie are presenting as housewives, in that archetypally, they’re both neurotic. They’re very different, though. Terry is bitter and has this cancerous kind of rage, whereas Maddie is more hopeful and sweet. But they do both fall into this woman’s picture archetype of the troubled housewife.

I think they want to find security in the domestic. But I do think there’s a little bit of rage burning at the core of Maddie, too.

Oh, Maddie’s got some rage for sure. But she doesn’t direct it at other people, just at herself.

Which we see more of in the film’s back half, when she’s in treatment. That section seems to have the most work to do to straddle the dramatic and the comedic; as you got to these places in the story where you’re in a clinical, rehabilitative setting, what considerations did you have about toeing the line one way or the other tonally?

The main thing I told myself was not to be scared, to throw myself into the Greek stakes of these TV melodramas. That’s every eating disorder movie: They go into treatment, there’s no avoiding it. And there’s always rebellion, resistance to the treatment, and some kind of escape. I also watched this movie “Thin,” which is a very harrowing documentary about an eating treatment center I got a lot from.

There’s the “Cuckoo’s Nest” of it all.

Yes, and “Girl, Interrupted,” and my friends’ experiences, who have been in treatment centers for eating disorders. They gave me beautiful details. I knew the biggest mistake I could make was, once I got there, to suddenly seize up and feel I had to handle things delicately. I have been totally shocked by the emotional responses to it from people who have been in treatment programs, who tell me, “It’s so accurate.” That’s thrilling to me, but it’s not necessarily what I was going for.

I was having a lot of imaginary fights with people on Twitter while I was writing this movie, and imagining these terrifying Q&As. None of that has happened, but I had to really try not to get lost in those thoughts, be an artist about it, and not forget the tonal needs of this style. My north star with the treatment center was to still go for it and not pump the brakes on the intensity, the crudeness, or the fun. That was a big thing, too; I didn’t want the audience to feel betrayed, as if we were suddenly in this grim, punishing part of the story. I wanted it to still be full of bright characters, soft colors, and adventure. I think we achieved that.

The film ends with Maddie jogging just as she did in the beginning, but it feels so different, and she feels so different. Where do you feel like Maddie’s running to?

I wanted that last shot to have a feeling of freedom—her hair is no longer half up, half down; it’s now fully down. There’s a little smile right at the freeze frame. I think Maddie has no immediate plan, but….I don’t think they’re long for this world, Maddie and Jake. What they go through in this movie is a tough thing to bounce back from. But by the end, she’s an integrated woman, and she wants to see what her life would be like elsewhere.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch