http://www.vulture.com/2016/11/tarell-alvin-mccraney-on-writing-moonlight.html

What Barry did so expertly, and what the story is doing so expertly, is saying, at the end of the day, the thing you most want has nothing to do with your masculinity or what occupation you decide. The thing you most want, being seen, doesn't require all of those things. And yet, we think that it does in some way. We think that a performance of something is necessary in order to get those things.

http://www.avclub.com/review/moana-introduces-yet-another-disney-princess-adds--246102#comment-3012594327

"Stop asking yourself what you want, what you desire, what interests you. Ask yourself instead: what has been given to me? What do I have to give back?" – Cheryl Strayed

http://www.avclub.com/article/spoiler-space-arrival-245685#comment-2997798659

jakevol2 • 8 days ago No one seems to be talking about the motivation of the heptapods. They will need us to help them in the future, but they need to help us so that we are able to help them. I think recognizing potential and the inherent good in what seems irrational, reactive and often brutally violent is as much about why God exists, or needs to exist or why God made people to exist. Its why Louise had a child although she knew the tragedy that would come of it. Potential (and not to add to my thesis statement in my closing argument but about gratefulness in the moment--or as it is faddishly called right now Mindfulness)

Yumzux Noncommutative • 7 days ago Yes. Both of those statements are incorrect. They may, to some extent, be able to understand human languages, but they think differently from us and need us to learn their language for their plans to work, and because their language is a gift that reshapes how we think. They don't communicate in English because forcing us to learn their language is the main point of their mission. Also, they don't have a 3000-year head start, that number just comes up because that is when they will need our help.

http://www.avclub.com/article/spoiler-space-arrival-245685#comment-2999269405

http://www.gq.com/story/kether-donohue-youre-the-worst?sf42762004=1

Vocally, but in a different vein, how do you describe your Lindsay voice? Because listening to you talk right now, your voice is so different from your character. I read Jane Fonda’s autobiography, and in one of the chapters she’s talking about when she really came into her own as a feminist. She found that when she wasn’t really living life authentically, for herself, she would speak more from her head and not really from her gut. I speak in a higher-pitched voice when I’m Lindsay, naturally, because Lindsay has been accustomed to not really knowing who she is. When I’m more myself, my voice is a lower register than Lindsay’s—not to say that if you have a high-pitched voice you’re not living authentically.

"what if we made a realistic outlander?" -arrival folks

it was not a baby, it was just a bunch of cells! name one family that's just a bunch of cells. osmosis jones. why does everybody keep doing that!

http://luckypeach.com/guides/the-five-ramen-shops-you-can-and-should-visit-in-tokyo/

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2016/11/a_conversation_with_zadie_smith_about_cultural_appropriation_male_critics.html

What other things have changed about the way you look at the world now? I don’t think I’m a particularly political person. I don’t have a political intelligence. My husband’s like that, I have lots of friends like that, but I’m not a political animal. When I’m looking around, I’m thinking intimately about people’s intimate life. That’s my business. Sometimes people’s intimate lives reflect the political world, but my first concern is always people. I think the pessimism, if there is one, it’s just as you get older it becomes more and more obvious to you that life is not a perfected art. It’s not that generation after generation everybody improves and becomes better, but that you move in these constant cycles. Something I’ve found personally and maybe it has some resonance politically is that progress is never permanent. That goes for the welfare state, that goes for personal progress in your life. You have to be continually reclaimed, restated, reargued.

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/04/outlander-season-2-costumes

The essence of his talent is multivocal, and he has, in the past, attributed this to his childhood anxiety at having the wrong voice, which, in his case, meant speaking like his mother—that is, speaking “white.” (“It cannot be a coincidence that I decided to go into a career where my whole purpose is altering the way I speak and experiencing these different characters and maybe proving in my soul that the way someone speaks has nothing to do with who they are,” he told Terry Gross, on “Fresh Air.”)

Some people are simply best suited to a challenge, as Jay Martel reminded me, when he e-mailed, a few days later, with a favorite anecdote from the show: “In our sketch about competing actors playing Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, we stacked up heightening physical bits, without really stopping to consider if they were physically possible—including asking Keegan (playing Malcolm X) to do the Worm across the stage. When we shot it, Keegan executed a perfect Worm. After the take, he stood up and said, ‘Apparently, I can do the Worm.’ He’d never even attempted it before.”

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/brother-another-mother

anything you can do i can better* *except refill the watercooler thank you much

it's 11:11 on 11/11 so we can stop talking about it now

the vogue michelle obama profile is breathtaking and hurts so much to read and i'm gonna buy every copy at the store

this morning

what do we tell our kids? what we'd tell our friends: the truth while we stand with them as we struggle not to turn away from our own hearts. to make sure they get what they need in the moment, in these critical moments, so we don't lose one another.
what will we tell our kids? that we got so close to the future we could taste it, and it was sweet, and it will always be our first choice for what feeds us.
("darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.")
i resolve to be kind and forgiving and strong as a result.
(and yet, and yet... this pain is very real. my country, and i know no other, does not want me. they spit me out of their mouth.)
please take care. for me, and for other headcases: hey! get up and do something that engages your senses so you remember they're there.
make the choices that will help you make your way back to yourself.
till then.

http://www.vulture.com/2016/05/outlanders-caitriona-balfe-on-claires-grief.html http://www.vulture.com/2016/05/outlander-recap-season-2-episode-7.html http://www.vulture.com/2016/05/outlander-star-chamber-set-design.html http://www.vulture.com/2016/06/outlander-stephen-walters-on-kissing-claire.html http://www.vulture.com/2016/06/outlander-recap-season-2-episode-12.html http://www.vulture.com/2016/07/outlander-graham-mctavish-dougal-knife-fight.html http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/18/outlander-recap-geillis-trial-witch/?_r=0

The friendship between the two women, though brief, is powerful because it exists as beloved childhood friendships once did. The magic of being understood without having to explain yourself, to be known by someone before they’ve even come to know you, is an occurrence so prized in adulthood that it’s been almost entirely co-opted by romance. Claire and Jamie have love and fidelity and have sworn to protect the other, but when all is said and done, it’s Geillis Duncan who gives herself over to the angry mob to keep Claire safe, an act of love that stands unrivaled. Geillis’s choice changes the trajectory of many lives, and allows for the escape of Jamie and Claire. In “The Reckoning,” while acting as the show’s narrator, Jamie speaks of every man making a choice between right and wrong and that the sum of those choices becomes your life. And while that’s not necessarily wrong, it misses the heart of what much of marriage is. Marriage, at its core, is making the same choice over and over, every day, every moment. The choice is not between right or wrong or love and hate or life and death. It’s about whether you want the person you’re with or not. Marriage is choosing the former, even if you suspect the latter. And once they’re free of the bloodthirsty mob, Claire and Jamie realize the breadth of what that choice entails. It is when they’re free of the frenzy that Claire finally admits to Jamie the truth of who she is. He asks if she’s a witch, and she tells him the whole of her story. She explains why she knows what she knows and how she can walk amid dying men and remain untouched. She tells him how she understands that this truth is likely more unbelievable than any lie she might tell him and declares that she’s no witch, but a time traveler. But, because he’s Jamie, true and good and honest, he believes her. And the next day, when Jamie asks Claire if she’s ready to go home, it’s not Lallybroch that lays over the horizon, but Craigh na Dun, the stones through which Claire slipped out of her time and into his. He leaves her, telling her to return to her time, as there’s nothing for her in Scotland. After he’s gone, Claire examines her two hands, her two rings, her two love lines, her two lives, and she makes a choice. She chooses Jamie. She’ll make that choice again and again, just as Jamie will, an infinite number of times, because that’s what marriage is.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/27/outlander-lallybroch_n_7155096.html

Claire, Jamie’s wife, plays the role of Scotland in their marriage: She may mime deference when she needs to and she is still learning to play by an alien society’s rules. But, like the Scottish people, she is not actually cowed and demands to be taken seriously — heard, seen, understood. Sometimes, she’s too brash and stubborn, but neither Jamie or the English give ground easily. All progress and compromise is a struggle, and sometimes compromise is just not possible.

With some shows, I find myself thinking about what the people are doing when they’re not on screen because their inner lives and agendas are so rich and dynamic. “Outlander” isn’t that kind of show for me, but I think about it all the time, partly because its many collisions produce so many interesting frictions. We see Claire’s 20th Century baggage collide with Jamie’s 18th Century ideas about what’s masculine and what’s feminine, what’s proper and what’s not.

15 days, not too shabby

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/outlander-believes-true-love-239340#comment-2776051058

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/outlanders-first-battle-scene-does-not-disappoint-238090#comment-2726353358

Plague • 5 months ago Whenever Claire's not on the screen, all the rest of the characters should be asking "Where's Claire?

http://tomandlorenzo.com/2015/04/outlander-lallybroch/

Jamie: Claire, would you tell me more about airplanes and elephants while I go down on you? Claire: Well, if you insist. Jamie: Wait, nevermind. We’re here. Lallybroch! *bagpipes* Jamie: I have to warn you now, Claire; when I walk through those gates, I’ll probably start acting like a right arsehole. Claire: Darling, you’re not my first Laird. Jamie: I’m not your first anything.