#arcticle

Tom Hiddleston and Sean Foley chat to Wesley Smith at the REP

Harry Styles, Variety‘s Hitmaker of the Year for 2020, opened the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards Sunday night with a laid-back version of his hit song “Watermelon Sugar.”

Sporting a fitted black leather suit and green feather boa, Styles grooved through his first-ever Grammys performance. The former One Direction member was accompanied by an eight-piece band, including a saxophonist, trombone player and two back-up singers, giving “Watermelon Sugar” a jazzy feel. Devonté Hynes, better known as Blood Orange, played a cherry-red bass during the performance, which he also directed.

During the song’s penultimate chorus, Styles embarked on a dance break, flinging off the boa to reveal his bare chest. He flitted across the stage as his band improvised, dancing with the back-up singers and basking in the glow of the stage.

Styles is a contender for best pop solo performance for “Watermelon Sugar,” best pop vocal album for “Fine Line” and best music video for “Adore You.” On the heels of several hit singles, his latest album has sold 2.5 million units since its release in December 2019. “Fine Line” is RIAA certified double platinum, has over 4 billion worldwide streams and six songs that have cracked the Billboard top 100 chart, including the recently released “Treat People With Kindness” and “Lights Up.” “Fine Line” already picked up a win at the American Music Awards for Favorite Pop/Rock Album in November.

Styles, 27, first ascended on the pop charts as a member of One Direction after competing on the British music singing competition, “The X Factor.” His debut album, “Harry Styles,” was released in 2017.

I find the title of this article quite misleading (as they often are) but for the links sake I kept it. IMAO it’s been chosen to get a reaction out of people. Martin talks about so much here. His roles in Black Panther, Sherlock, Fargo, Startup, personal things, his new TV series Breeders, being a mod, music etc. 

Read for yourself:

“In a reversal of usual Hollywood practice, Martin Freeman stars as one of only two white characters in a predominantly black film. He plays a CIA agent on the trail of a villain in the superhero blockbuster Black Panther. The other white actor is his Hobbit co-star Andy Serkis. As a result, the two were known on set as “the Tolkien white guys”.

“Yes, that was quite funny,” agrees Freeman, over a sushi lunch. His character, Everett Ross, is also on the receiving end of one of the film’s best lines – “Don’t try and scare me, coloniser!” – after he bumps into Shuri, a princess in the mythical African kingdom in which the film is set.

But Freeman was keen that Agent Ross should be more than the beleaguered operator that appears in the original Marvel comics, saying he didn’t want to play another “goofy white guy among cool black people going ‘What the hell?’” So he discussed fleshing out his character with director Ryan Coogler.

“And he was completely on board with that,” says Freeman. “I had no interest in [playing a thin character] any more than a black actor would have had interest – as they have been for many years – in being a one-or two-dimensional black character.”

Freeman thinks we’ll be seeing more of Everett Ross in the Marvel cinematic universe. But he isn’t sure if that will mean he and Sherlockco-star Benedict Cumberbatch – who plays Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the franchise – will ever share big-screen time. Nor is he sure if he and Cumberbatch will be reunited on the small screen any time soon.

The fourth series of Sherlock finished in January 2017 amid a flurry of negative headlines accusing the once highly acclaimed show of having become convoluted and over-the-top. How did Freeman feel about the backlash?

“Um, we’re British. We basically want everyone to die after the first album,” he says. Yet he thinks some of the critics may have had a point. “To be absolutely honest, it [was] kind of impossible. Sherlock became the animal that it became immediately. Whereas even with The Office [the Ricky Gervais comedy that launched Freeman’s career] it was a slow burn. But Sherlock was frankly notably high quality from the outset. And when you start [that high] it’s pretty hard to maintain that.”

He seems more frustrated by speculation among the show’s rabid fan base that Watson and Sherlock are in love. “There was a chunk of people who just knew it was going to end with us getting together,” he says, still sounding exasperated 15 months after the last episode was broadcast.

For the record, then: “Me and Ben, we have literally never, never played a moment like lovers. We ain’t f------ lovers,” he says forcefully.

Have they discussed a fifth series?

“Not massively. Um… I think after series four [it] felt like a pause. I think we felt we’d done it for a bit now. And part of it, speaking for myself is [due to] the reception of it.”

Rather than the criticism, he means the exceptional personal pressure he found himself under as a result of the show’s success. “Being in that show, it is a mini-Beatles thing,” he says. “People’s expectations, some of it’s not fun any more. It’s not a thing to be enjoyed, it’s a thing of: ‘You better f------ do this, otherwise you’re a c---.’ That’s not fun any more,” he repeats.

The actual reason for our meeting is to talk about Freeman’s new compilation album, Jazz on the Corner, which he has put together with old friend Eddie Piller, the founder of revered label Acid Jazz.

The pair co-hosted a show on independent station Soho Radio a couple of years ago: two hours of “digging in the crates” for beloved old jazz records to play. There was such a positive response to it, that Piller suggested an album.

“And it was nice. It’s just a good excuse to delve through some jazz records at home and kid yourself that, ‘I’m doing this for this work purposes’.”

The actor is a Mod to the soles of his well-shod shoes, but Freeman was keen to break out of the confines of the culture and “go jazz”.

“There are some, for want of a better word, Mods who can’t talk about anything else. Totally mono-cultural. And that drives me totally barmy.”

He himself grew up on the fusion of ska and punk rock that dominated the early Eighties. “Catholicism and Two Tone were my twin religions as a kid,” he grins. “I was crazy about it. I went mad over Madness and The Beat and the Specials. It was great music that managed to touch 19-year-olds and nine-year-olds.”

It’s music first and foremost that keeps him sane in the long hours of downtime on film sets, particularly on huge and laborious productions like the Atlanta-based Black Panther.

His long absences away from home are rumoured to be among the reasons for his split from his partner and Sherlock co-star Amanda Abbington, with whom he has two young children, in 2016. He admits now that juggling work with home life has always been tricky. “Even when Amanda and I were together I was very picky [over what I did]. I even thought about [not doing] The Hobbit! I was thinking, ‘Hmm, that’s a long time away from two little kids…’”

Has the split made him change his attitude to his career? “No, it hasn’t massively impacted on my life. I’m determined to do things that I want to do. And not do the things I don’t want to do. And me and Amanda will always find a way of making it work, because we’re very supportive of each other.”

Freeman is currently single, which might help explain his raft of recent projects, including Black Panther, the jazz album, last year’s West End play Labour of Love, an Australian zombie movie for Netflix called Cargo and new BBC sitcom Breeders.

Created by and starring Freeman, Breeders is about “the stuff in parenting that nice middle-class people just don’t want to talk about, and almost never do," he says. "And I can’t quite believe it. I can’t have serious conversations with parents who don’t admit that sometimes they want to throw themselves out of a window – for real!

“I realised when my kids were very, very young that I couldn’t have any more nice north London conversations about how fantastic it was. Yes, of course it is – you love your kids more than anything in the world. But sometimes you want to kill everyone in your house.”

Part of his recent output would also seem to be driven by a desire to remove himself as much as possible from the ‘everyman’ persona he first cultivated as Tim in The Office, a persona he has vocally resented being labelled with ever since. Recent roles have been grubbier and dirtier, from his mild-mannered insurance man who descends into murder in Channel 4’s Fargo, to the Amazon drama StartUp, in which he played “a bent FBI agent”.

“I really enjoyed doing that,” he says eagerly of StartUp. “In Fargo you saw a guy who at the start was not psychopathic and was not mental. But in StartUp he begins there. This was not an, ‘ooh, he’s an everyman, but he’s taken a turn…’ No, he’s really dark. And I really loved that.

Did it unlock any inner demons?

Dark souls isn’t hard. This might seem like a statement trying to get to your nerves, or just dismissing the hardships you face while playing, but it isn’t, or at least I’m not trying to make it sound so. It IS Scary, Daunting, it makes you feel like you’re weak, like you don’t have a chance, but it is not hard per sei, And saying dark souls I could mean any of the games “from software” has made.  Now if the game isn’t hard, why does it seem hard?

First The ambient, the way dark souls looks, sounds and feels is made to put you in a tense mood, from the majestic gothic buildings Anor Londo  (from The first Game) to the broken down shacks of The undead settlement (in Dark Souls 3), the dark humid and slimy corners, the dimly lit cathedrals, the choirs of despair, they’re all built in a way to make you feel that sense of scale, loneliness, of being smaller and intrinsically less powerful than the world around you. Try playing dark souls with different background music, turn all the lights in the room on, or with the windows open on a summer day, with or without headphones.  You’ll understand how setting the mood of the game is half of what makes it feel scary.

Then you have the precise combat See, for instance the diference between facing an enemy you’ve fought one hundred times, versus the first time you meet them. I played Dark souls II twice, the first time I had never played a dark souls game, I knew nothing except “it was hard” and not only I played 100hours and never finished it because I got stuck, I was super careful facing every enemy, everything was a threat, everyone was a force to be reckoned with, I was terrified, that’s how dark souls want’s you to feel.

The second time though? I was blasting through it, I knew the enemies, their patterns, I wasn’t feeling like a weak undead, but more like a capable knight instead, because I had all that previous experience, the game itself was a completely different experience. I knew what to expect and I had learned how to face it. Dark souls is a game about patience and learning (at least as far as mechanics go).

And it actually lends you a lot of help on the way, if you play online there are plenty helpful messages left by your fellow players, phantoms (either player or AI controlled) can be summoned to help, sure playing online can leave you open to invasions by other players, but that is all to maintain a big part of the game’s core fairness. Because it is a fair game, the carefully constructed combat is all about observation, enemy movement tells you all you need to know about how to win, every animation has a wind up, and release fail to see it, rush in, attack blindly and you’ll get punished, analyze, take your time, see the openings, and you’ll be rewarded.

Yes dark souls isn’t a walk in the park, it is challenging, but as something people seem to forget, it is also fair, even tipping the odds in your favor sometimes. (see the famous invincibility frames when rolling for instance).

The level layout can be confusing on purpose to make you feel lost at times, but it’s design is carefully constructed so as with combat, careful observation of your surroundings  will more often than not give you an advantage in the fights ahead, areas are also built in such a way that you’ll find plenty of shortcuts that make it easier to transverse the world, and more often than not there are ways for you to ”cheese” hard enemies if you feel like you really want to hold on to those souls no matter what, specially if you have a primarily ranged class, although you’ll probably pick up plenty throwing items along the way, with witch to cheese, or lure opponents out one at a time if you don’t.

Dark souls isn’t hard, but it assumes that you’ll be mindful of the experience you’re having, and it will challenge you, make you work for the victory, unlike a lot of games out there that will hold your hand every step of the way. Now of course this will brush off players that just want a power trip, or are looking for a more relaxing time but it will and has held a fan base that doesn’t get that many challenging games.

The game will actively try it’s best to trick you, to stress you and yes kill you, but as any player who’s tried it more than once will know, it is not as hard as most sensationalist video/ review/ critics make it out to be,

The phrase dark souls of insert game genre here(which I think we really should stop using) if used, should be more about calculated combat, masterful ambience, and environmental storytelling, than blandly about “I had a hard time killing things” so it is hard.

It’s important to look critically at games beyond first impressions, I feel that with the current need of reviews out in the very day of release, and races to see who gives information first, it is important for us to take our time to experience a game, and give thoughtful opportunities to learning mechanics and themes beyond the appearance.

On a side note I also believe the marketing of the game, mainly in the 1st special edition, “Dark souls Prepare to die edition” does not make justice to the game and feels more like a shot at sales through some kind of gamer credit for beating a difficult game. (I mean yes you should be prepared to die but you should always be prepared for the awesome feeling of winning, and they didn’t call it “Dark souls it will feel great when you win edition”! although I must admit prepare to die fits more with the gloomy ambience of the game)

That said I’m not a great dark souls player, but I’ve had incredibly easy times with some bosses that felt unbelievably hard at first, it is all a question of careful approach, learning and timing, that combined, I guess, would be considered skill at the game.

If you’re doubtful just watch streamers or speed runners of the game, and you’ll see how they know the enemies, their move sets, their phases, (some even do runs with no armor or with bare fists) of course they are the epitome of skill at the game, but even without long extensive play time and attempts at defeating enemies you’ll understand pretty well how the enemies in combat work like the anticipation attacks have warning you when they’re coming, and the way you deal with them it’s just a matter of  using your character’s moves to bypass their’s.

Now if you read this far first thank you for listening to me, and I’d like to add a little something that might not be directly connected to the game being hard or not, but I wanted to give a shout out to the way from software does story, and I’m not talking exclusively about the environmental story telling, (which IS a banner of these games) I’m talking about the purposeful hiding of the full story, or what I like to call “missing piece story telling”.

Not giving the players the full story right away, hiding information or just never even put it in the game in the first place creates this broken, missing, storyline that not only mimics the state of the in game world, (old, faded and forgotten) it also serves to incite players curiosity, to make dark souls a game you take beyond your play session, that keeps dedicated players thinking long after they’ve beaten a boss or they found gear from an NPC.

What the connection between those and the larger events in the world might have been, has led to countless theories and views of the Dark souls lore circling in the web. This is a gift for the very passionate and dedicated fan base they have, for the players who are invested and have spent their time with the game, as an experience and not something just to pass the time.

finally I’ll leave you with a quote from the writer at Ask a game dev that I think represents very well how dark souls fits in our gaming world

“Dark Souls is kind of like the dark chocolate of video games. It’s a little bitter and has a lot of flavor depth, but it isn’t as sweet or easy to eat as the stuff most people are used to. Not everybody likes it, but those who do like it a lot.”

Modernism in architecture was indirectly brought out by the industrial revolution between 1750 and 1850 with the invention of the steam engine. Occurred in Europe and the United States, industrial revolution was a whole turning point for technology and led to the inventions of building’s material and architecture. First emerged in the early twentieth century, modern architecture began to gain reputations after World War II, after it contributed solutions to modern mass housing which meet basic social needs. Modern architecture used the function of the buildings as its strong base in terms of designing a building by the usages of newly invented materials, structural innovations, and elimination of ornaments.

Post war housing : Park Hill Estate, Sheffield, by Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith 

Designing purely based on a building's purpose became a strong principal in modern architecture. This principle leads to its formal aspect following how the building will be used. It constructed asymmetrical compositions, minimize ornaments used in the design, and tendency toward “plain” architecture with a neutral palette. Building’s materials used commonly are newly invented materials to those days, such as reinforced concrete, steel frames, plastic, ribbon windows and curtain walls. These building’s materials were applied raw and honest. 

Modern architecture is considered as an era full of arrogant, ambitious and idealist architects in which they believed that a better architecture would be followed by a better world. Modernist architects around the post war era brought out their very own point of view and idealism, acted all high and mighty, and put their clients, users and even professionals excluded, even dragged them down, from their projects.

For example, Corbusier gave a statement about how a house must be “a machine for living in”. Home should have the purity of form of a well-designed machine to provide its function. Some modernist projects even came with furniture and more to tie down the design to not be changed by its future users. However, users need identity and comfort that might not be equal between one and another. This condition led the houses to lose its comfort and turned to ‘house’ rather than a ‘home’.

The fall of St. Louis Notorious Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project, also the fall of modern architecture

Moreover, modern architecture diminished the historical and cultural aspects to rebuild cities, resulting in major demolition of historical buildings or disrespectful building characteristics to its surrounding area.

Postmodern later emerged as a counter response to the failure of modern architecture. Started in the 1970s, post modern conveyed free-thinking movement with conceptual consideration to the surrounding environment. Learning from the modernism era, post-modern intended to rediscover classical architecture and apply them to modern structure. Postmodern used architectural language to send complex messages of the buildings. With the idea of free-thinking, it was hard to define which building is postmodern work.

Piazza d’Italia by Charles Moore, a postmodernism in architecture

Contradiction became the core thinking of postmodernism to embrace contextuality by mixing various styles and various elements from various eras to create unique architecture. It resulted in familiar looking buildings that somehow honored local history but had new visual appeal.

However, modern architecture is still described as the finest solutions for post war middle-class mass housing to solve social problems, such as slum and poverty. Even until now, the minimalism of modern architecture is still applied in social housing projects and modern living. Architecture these days should learn from the failure of modern architecture and to become more respectful, not only to the clients and users, but also to the history and culture of the surrounding environment. Minimalist structure can still be applied to mass housing and considering the probability of its growth in identity by users. 

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Knox, Paul L. 1987. The Social Production of the Built Environment Architects, architecture and the Post-Modern City. 11: 354-371

Hopkins, Owen. 2014. Architectural Styles, A Visual Guide. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd