Movie fans and comic readers alike are still gnashing their teeth at the dramatic mess that is Batman vs. Superman. While the film has earned an unreasonable eight hundred, thirty million dollars at the box office, the film leaves ticket buyers asking the same question.
Why did they kill Superman… AGAIN?? Now granted, I know I'm in the minority here, but I have never liked the “Death of Superman” books from 1992. Or any other year for that matter. The killing and re-killing of Superman highlights a serious flaw with DC Comics that needs to not only be addressed, it needs to be solved. And re-writing the universe again is not going to fix it. Starting in the 1970's, DC began letting their characters dip into darker territories. Part if it was in response and retaliation towards Marvel, which had already gained ground with comics that openly talked about drug use, violence and death, but another part of it was a desperate, but successful attempt to gain new readers, who wanted less to do with the “kid's stuff” of superheroes and more to do with edgier, more taboo story-lines. By the 1980's, DC had allowed Frank Miller, better known at the time for his writing for Marvel's Daredevil, a four issue shot at re-envisioning Batman as a more darker, brooding soul, while their usual staff was hard at work writing out the sad story of Starfire, kidnapped princess and child sex slave turned leader of the Teen Titans and tortured girlfriend of Nightwing. But while these off-putting topics were a break away from the usual “good vs. evil” DC had been known for, they were stories all written within a clear, linear context. There was a reason why these stories were being told, and it wasn't just to deliver some after-school special PSA. They served their purpose. We learn about Starfire being sold into slavery so we can understand why she has a troubled relationship with her older sister, Blackfire, who is responsible for her sale. We learn about Raven's father being the demon Trigon so we can better understand why she is a polarizing character. These are all stories that flesh out the superheroes and the cast surrounding them, making their brawls make more sense. If not everyone can have a clean cut story, such as Batman foiling the Catwoman because she's trying to rob the museum, then we can have a dark story with twists and turns, but again, with respect to context. And then in 1992, the shelves of my local comic book store began to look very bleak. It started with the Doomsday arc, concluding the following year with the Funeral for a Friend story. During that tumultuous time, we saw a monster named Doomsday beat the pulp out of Superman with little story behind it. With a paper-thin plot and little explanation, the pages began to fill with the gory images of Superman being beaten to death, followed in later issues with his body being entombed, stolen, preserved by Lex Luthor, discovered again by Supergirl and Lois Lane, and then buried again. The “shock jock” move led to a dip in the sales of DC titles, since nobody wants to read about depressed, grieving characters. So they un-killed Superman and gave him a mullet just a few months after the final funeral for the fallen hero. This cop-out may have set the universe back in time to score a new TV deal for the Man of Steel, but the damage was done. And not learning from the lesson of the Death of Superman fiasco, DC has kept up with the mistakes they made in 1992. Consistently. For 24 years. Since the first death for the Man of Steel, Superman has died several times, in more than one universe. More than twice in TV and DVD cartoons, a few times in video games, and now in live action film. And when DC is not satisfied with killing Superman, they're killing his adoptive parents, re-killing his birth parents and the planet he came from, killing Supergirl and all of her bubbly, blonde replacement clones, and you know what? They've even killed Lois Lane a few times. In fact, while she's the only Superman-themed character asking for it, they weren't happy just killing her off alone, either. In the video game Injustice, they let The Joker kill a pregnant Lois, because what fun is killing Superman's loved ones without throwing a fetus into the mix, right? They've killed Batman, Terra, Speedy's nine year old daughter, and a long litany of superheroes and civilians, only to bring them back later. And when they start running out of people to kill for little to no reason, they re-write the universe, just to do it all over again. By consistently hiring in writers with clear and obvious “Daddy didn't hug me” issues and making their comic world more gritty and dark, they've tried to retain those edgy, Goth and Emo kids that used to dominate comic shops in the 90's and early 2000's, and the brooding, whiny “If it's not miserable it's fake, if it's miserable it's real” Hipsters of the current millennium, who quite frankly, don't read DC comic books to begin with. But by caving in with the constant, depressing, cop-out writing, DC has done plenty to alienate the fans that actually were buying their merchandise. And while initial sales aren't bad for the current live action film, there is no chance the company can hope to real where Marvel is in the terms of cinema. And while I don't need for DC to return to a campy, kid-friendly “Super Friends” state like they were in the early 1970's, I don't need to be bored to death with another over-blown drama. Marvel has drama, yes, but within the context of a story that usually ends with a twinge of hope, leading to a more positive sequel story or bright ending. DC's drama is ~ even for a superhero story ~ unrealistic. As a kid, I initially turned to DC comics to get away from real life drama. I loved reading comics that didn't have “50 Shades of Grey” behind every character. Everything was black and white. You were either a good guy or a bad guy, and it used to be that the good guy would win, without having to wrestle with the grim reaper in doing so. When I was having a lousy day, I would watch the Superman Fleischer cartoons, because I wanted to be whisked away to a world where everything was clear-cut. There was a Superman who could do anything and would always take down the bad guys, and there was little threat to his life. I wanted to be in a world where my heroes could hold back the terror humans could not. Someone to make it better. With the current state of the world, movie goers don't need more drama. Most of us already deal with death, depression, angst and people in our lives with unreasonable trust issues. We don't need the death of a childhood hero thrown on top of it, when we already deal with the real-life deaths of our childhood celebrities on a weekly basis. We don't need another moody man. We don't need another dead man. We need a Superman. Koriander Bullard is an author, cartoonist and human rights advocate. Keep up with her on Facebook!
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Before I start, I think it's only fair we cover a few facts.
First of all, Saban's Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was directly taken from Toei's Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger. Zyuranger ran in Japan from 1992 to 1993, while Power Rangers started in 1993 and in one form or another, has been running off and on ever since. Zyuranger had an all Japanese cast, but to create Power Rangers, Haim Saban and his team would splice in the original action segments with newly filmed non-action segments from California. These new segments replaced the Japanese Super Sentai fighters with multi-cultural American Rangers, leaving the stock footage of the Japanese villains and background victims as the only Japanese characters on the show. Halfway through the original run of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, stock footage of Machiko Soga as Witch Bandora/Rita Repulsa ran out, prompting Saban to hire in Filipino actress Carla Pérez to continue in the role of Rita up through Power Rangers in Space except for the last MMPR movie, which had Filipino-Australian actress Julia Cortez take over the role. Grifforzar/Goldar, Lamy/Scorpina, Tottopatto/Baboo and BukkuBakku/Squatt would alternate between actors of different ethnic origins once their stock footage had also run out. Needless to say, all incarnations of Power Rangers have done a fair amount of race-swapping, to the point where the average fan may not even notice or care about the actor change when the latest Super Sentai series ends up cut up and re-packaged on Nickelodeon or Netflix, the new homes for the meta-series. But despite this history of race-swapping, even the most forgiving MMPR fan was seeing red when the new version of Rita Repulsa debuted in the form of blonde-haired and blue eyed Elizabeth Banks. The first problem is the fact that we have an Aryan-Caucasian in a role usually reserved for Filipino and Japanese actresses. Now don't get me wrong, she is a cute actress with a bubbly wit, and she does very well in most of her roles, so it isn't a stretch to say she “might” gain her own branch of Power Ranger fans out of this, but replacing a Filipino-Japanese character with a Caucasian actress, even in the most forgiving of settings, is a slap in the face. The second problem bleeds into the rest of the cast. Costuming. Not only did the new Rita costume fail to match the original by any stretch of the imagination, it's a blatant rip-off of Batman villain Poison Ivy. No thought, no direction, just a shameless theft of costume. Considering this film is going to be aimed at adult fans for the original series, wouldn't this be the time to allow Rita to saunter across the stage in her original, Madonna inspired cone-bra? And yes, as a straight woman, I would have approved of the cone-bra. And yes, in this day and age. But this image foreshadowed two more issues I have with this movie. One being that also in the spirit of ripping-off, Lionsgate and their hired writers are promising to rip-off of other lifeless, boring, gritty, Emo re-envisioned films such as The Dark Knight and Ninja Turtles by re-writing the universe of Power Rangers, refusing to follow the original story and adding wasted “trust issue” and “I'm moody for no reason” segments to make a darker story, in which you're “fake” unless you're miserable, then you're “real”. These elements only seem to appeal to those with unresolved “daddy” issues, and yet they insist on keeping this up, to appeal to the Hipsters who were born after the original went off the air. You know. Those fresh 20-somethings who love everything to be as dark and hopeless as the DeviantArt pages they felt pressured into having to fit in before they hit college and sent themselves into debt in an effort to prove to themselves that they know more than the rest of us. This is in contrast to the desires of the writers, who have tried to promise a more lighthearted movie, in spite of the studio's claims. The clash between Emo and Silly is likely the reason why the film has gone through a revolving door of writers and directors, adding to my frustration with the film. The second problem I had was basic. If this is how they were mishandling Rita's costume, which was basically a dress with feathers and a cone-bra, then how would they handle the Power Rangers' costumes? Well if you saw the above photograph, then you already know the answer. Not only can't they seem to figure out how to hire a non-White actor to play Rita, they also can't seem to figure out how to make spandex costumes look good in HD. Now this isn't the first time Hollywood has failed to put together a snug leotard with an overgrown bicycle helmet. In 1995 we were treated to an alternate universe Power Rangers film, in which the actors were forced to wear 30-to-50 lbs costumes, complete with hefty armor, the likes of which had never been on the TV show before or since. Did you hear that? That was the sound of peels of laughter from the Toei Studio in Tokyo, Japan. And why? Because they've been finding ways to make Tokusatsu and Kaiju related costumes look believable since 1959, and has been using spandex for all things Sentai related since 1983's Kagaku Sentai Dynaman, and has had no problem with making Super Sentai/Power Rangers movies since 1975, again with spandex and other, less bulky costumes. The new costumes look less like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and more like the studio tried to shave the Power Rangers: Dino Thunder costumes the wrong way down. The Red Ranger's new costume specifically has more in common with Marvel's Iron Man than with anything Sentai related, and again, comes across as a cheap rip-off. Without seeing the full trailer yet for the repeatedly pushed-back film, it's hard to say what direction we're going in. But if the costumes and the development issues are any indication, this film is set to please only those who are too cheap to watch the original on Netflix. It certainly doesn't bode well for the 2017 movie season, when Hollywood has resorted to re-envisioning an already and repeatedly re-envisioned series. Koriander Bullard is an author, cartoonist and human rights advocate. Keep up with her on Facebook!
Forgotten amid the high-profile deaths of music legend Prince and revolutionary woman wrestler Chyna was the death of British director Guy Hamilton, who passed away on April 20 at the age of 93.The name may not be familiar to the casual film fan, but here’s a roll call of some of his most familiar titles: ‘Goldfinger’, ‘Diamonds Are Forever’, ‘Live and Let Die’, ‘The Man With the Golden Gun’, ‘The Colditz Story’, ‘Remo Williams’, ‘Battle of Britain’ and ‘The Devil’s Disciple’. All of which have been familiar staples in the well-stocked family video store or local television back in the days when movies reigned supreme on the airwaves.
Hamilton was born in Paris, to British diplomats living abroad. It was there where he would be bitten by the movie bug, becoming a clapperboard boy at the Victorine Studios in Nice. He would move to London to work in the British branch of Paramount. Then World War II broke out and Hamilton felt the urge to serve his country by joining the Royal Air Force. Once the war concluded, Hamilton resumed his film career. He would find himself taken under the wing of distinguished director Sir Carol Reed, serving as his assistant director for three of the best British films ever made: Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949). It was at Reed’s urging that Hamilton turned to film directing, making his debut with the 1952 thriller 'The Ringer'. Hamilton began his career making two kinds of movies: suspense flicks and war dramas. In 1961, Hamilton was offered the premiere James Bond film ‘Dr. No’, but he turned it down, feeling he couldn’t pull it off. However,things had changed enough by 1964 that when an offer to direct the Bond film may feel is the best in the series, ‘Goldfinger’, he gladly accepted the project. Hamilton would crucially add a dose of sardonic humor to the Bond character that had been portrayed with dead seriousness in ‘Dr. No’ and ‘From Russia With Love’. With his reputation for delivering well-crafted action movies on time and on budget and fresh off three successful James Bond movies, it was no wonder why Hamilton was the first choice of producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind to direct the much anticipated ‘Superman’. Disaster struck during pre-production when the Salkinds, notorious for pinching every last penny whenever possible and seldom letting anyone else know about it, moved the production from Italy’s Cinecitta Studios to England’s Pinewood Studios. This was bad news for Hamilton, who was a tax exile that could only spend up to 30 days in England a year. ‘Superman’ was actually scheduled to film simultaneously with ‘Superman II’, so there was simply no way Hamilton could stay on as director. Hamilton would rebound with another high-profile project of sorts, the long anticipated sequel to the popular war epic ‘The Guns of Navarone’. That sequel, ‘Force 10 From Navarone’, was a troubled production that had taken well over 15 years to finally find financing. A complicated deal led to Columbia Pictures having European distribution while American distribution fell to the last place an expensive war actioner should have wound up: American International Pictures. While Columbia released Hamilton’s preferred 126 minute director’s cut in Europe to solid business, AIP decided to tamper with the finished film, removing scenes at random and rearranging others to create a sloppy 117 minute cut eviscerated by American critics and audiences when it finally showed up on domestic movie screens in 1979. Hamilton’s directing career quieted down after that. There was a pair of Agatha Christie mysteries: 'The Mirror Crack’d' (1980) and 'Evil Under the Sun' (1982). In 1985, Hamilton directed what was an attempt to launch a franchise from the popular “Destroyer” pulp novels, 'Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins'. It was a very good film, but it just didn’t take off at the box office the way Orion Pictures had hoped, although it wound up finding its’ audience on home video and TV airings (the latter of which is where I first caught it). He was Warner Bros. first choice to direct what would become the 1989 blockbuster ‘Batman’, back when the studio was reaping the box office bonanzas of the first three ‘Superman’ movies. They had hired screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz, who had worked with Hamilton on the first three Bond films of the 1970s. The duo conceived of a darker vision that what the studio at the time wanted, ending with both men parting ways from the project. Hamilton, increasingly tiring of the cutthroat attitudes of the film business, only made one more feature: 1989’s little-seen ‘Try This One On For Size’. After that film disappeared without a trace, Hamilton decided to retire to Majorca with his second wife Kerima. He never disavowed his earlier film career, continuing to participate in supplemental material for DVD releases of his classic titles, particularly the Bond series. The word has been mum as to what Hamilton was ailing from at the time of his death, other than he had been in and out of medical care for the past year. I imagine that at age 93, it was just his time to go. As a director, Hamilton was never considered one of the all-time greats by the cineaste crowd. The reason is quite simple: Hamilton never employed a flashy directorial style that called attention to itself. He focused on telling a good story as simply as possible and with a firm balance between acting, character development and stuntwork that felt organic instead of plastered on-screen by force. He made movies efficiently, seldom going over budget. All of which is heresy to the auterist film snob crowd. I’ll take substance over style any day of the week. Hamilton was a solid craftsman who made some good entertainments that helped one forget one’s troubles while watching. That’s more than good enough for me. He left the cinematic world a better place than when he entered it. His best films will continue to live on forever. That’s a good legacy for any filmmaker.
How do I summarize into so many words someone as eclectic as Prince?
As I type this, details are still being sorted out, surrounding the sudden passing of Prince Rogers Nelson, who at one point had reduced his name to that of a symbol. Conflicting reports about flu-like symptoms and unwarranted speculation aside, the only fact we have is that gone too soon is a pioneer of modern music. His track “Batdance” for example, was more than a dance club fluff piece to promote 1989's Batman starring Michael Keaton. It was actually one of several iconic pieces of music from the Prince created soundtrack. To create Batdance, Prince would play one instrument for a seven minute set on a recording. Then put it down and record another track with another instrument, on and on, until finally mixing in his own vocal track. The entire composition is done entirely by ONE man. And many other tracks on the album are comprised of the sounds of Prince playing with Prince while recording with Prince. And unprecedented feat not repeated by mainstream music. Prince was a self-taught musician of many instruments, but that should come as no surprise when you consider he was the son of jazz musician Mattie Della-Shaw and pianist John Lewis Nelson. A child of divorce, Prince would channel his emotion into music, and began producing his own songs as a child. Through much trial and tribulation, he was able to release his first, real hit in 1978. While working hard at making his own dream a reality, he formed a band known as “The Time” which he then donated to his friend Morris Day, helping him get his career off the ground. Prince would also jump start the careers of Sheila E, Sinead O'Connor, and recently deceased singer Vanity, among many other performers. Prince unwittingly helped out mixed race and other minorities make waves in the music community, where they were otherwise ignored, as well as many female talents in an industry that at the time was more about looks than talent. Prince himself was African American, but seldom brought race into any interview, focusing on ability rather than color. Aside from music, Prince was also known for his role in acting, most notably in his first film Purple Rain, about a troubled musician, his abusive family having influence on his destructive behavior, and band rivalry ripping up his personal relationships. The box office smash, put together by his record label Warner Brothers, would later become an even bigger hit on VHS, later spawning a success-less sequel titled Graffiti Bridge in 1990. Between the two films, Prince starred in and directed two more movies, Under the Cherry Moon in 1986, about a gigolo who falls in love, and Sign o' the times in 1987, a concert movie. Both were commercial failures initially, but Sign o' the times would later recoup many of it's losses in the VHS market, and globally in the DVD and Blu-Ray market, though a US DVD and Blu-Ray release has never come to be. Still, the Purple Rain stunt helped launch him towards composing the soundtrack to 1989's Batman, also put together through Warner Brothers. But at the start of the 1990's, where Prince had some ups and downs, tensions arose between Prince and his record label. In 1993, he changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, costing the label a mint in advertising, which required a new font be created from scratch to accompany the new name. He began spinning out new albums faster than ever, in an attempt to get out of his contract with Warner Brothers faster, however he would not see his freedom from the label until early in 2000. During those years, Prince's album sales would peak and dip several times. Nevertheless, the eccentric wonder of the music world found new ways to re-invent himself, finding a younger and younger audience. In 1997, he became the first musician in history to release an entire album via the internet. Crystal Ball was available via download or telephone only, an unprecedented move. Though as forward-thinking as the move was, it would highlight a level of hypocrisy in the musician in later years. Between 2007 and 2014, Prince routinely sued YouTube and many of his fans, for any and all use of his image and sound on the internet. Any form of sharing, whether good or bad, was treated as straight-up bootlegging. He fiercely ignored the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright Act of 1976, and sought damages from his fans in the millions. His misuse and misquote of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 eventually led to a brouhaha of sorts with the band Radiohead. In 2008, Prince performed a cover of the song “Creep” at the 2008 Coachella Music Festival, only to days later have his lawyers remove all reference to the performance from social media. In protest, Radiohead spearheaded a legal campaign against Prince, demanding he cough up the rights to the performance, since he did not own the rights to the song and had only performed a cover. "It's our song, let people hear it” demanded the band. But for as strong as their retaliation efforts were, the only fruit this bore was a temporary showcase of Prince performing Cream as replayed on his now defunct website, LotusFlow3r.com. Though Prince eased up slightly on his crusade against the internet in the final year and a half of his life, most of Prince's output remains off of most social media websites, with YouTube promising a three strike ban promise on repeat offenders. Despite the constant attacks however, Prince spent his last years with yet an even younger audience. The same Millennial listeners that would face YouTube content rejections from Prince's camp, ended up legally buying his later tracks on iTunes, attending his concerts and of course, taking selfies while in the audience of the handful of late-night talk show appearances he made to promote his last tours. Prince was eclectic, internet-wise eccentric, but overall a talented musician. He was in the process of penning an autobiography at the time of his death, and no doubt out it, it was likely to be as colorful and inspiring as he was. Koriander Bullard is an author, cartoonist and human rights advocate. Keep up with her on Facebook!
I have to be honest, I didn't actually start watching any of the Mad Max films until a few months before Fury Road came out. But my husband is a huge fan, so just before Fury Road hit theaters last year, I purchased the first three movies off of Amazon, and went on a movie binge, just so I'd be caught up on the story of Max. There was something oddly different and pleasant about the movies, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
Opening day, we went to go see Fury Road, amid various masculine ads and posters. There were images of exploding cars and violent slaughtering, all the makings of a truthfully man-heavy film, so I thought. But as the movie drew to a close, I began to figure out what makes the Mad Max series stand out so much more than all of the other so-called “dude” flicks. The series is sprinkled with gender equality, without it being a major deal. But none more-so than Fury Road, which is actually a pro-feminist, estrogen chick flick, disguised as a testosterone laden car show. Which is why I am deeply disappointed that most of the feminist movement missed this gem of a film, as has the Academy, who may have bestowed the film with a few well deserved technical Oscars, but not the larger wins it cleanly deserved. In fact, feminists who admitted later to not having watched the film, lied, accusing it of being anti-woman, when it's arguably the most empowering movie a young woman could have seen in 2015. The movie is centered around Furiosa, a handicapped soldier who was kidnapped as a child, and brought to the Citadel, under the leadership of the movie's main villain, Immortan Joe. Just after the introduction of The Citadel, we find Furiosa has kidnapped Joe's concubines and favored wives, and is on a race against the elements to get the women to safety, via The War Rig, a giant, spiked and deadly truck, which is loaded up with breast milk. Using quick wits and a large assortment of stolen weapons, Furiosa defies the odds by proving to be a very fast and capable bodyguard to the frightened slaves. Along the way, Furiosa finds her way through the desert to her original homeland, and has to come to grips with the grim fate of her family, while also helping the last remaining survivors of her all female tribe suit up for one last grand stand against Joe's fleet. As if this isn't enough, Furiosa also finds herself indirectly finding a way to free an entire race of people who live beneath the Citadel. And what about Max you ask? Well… he's there, but more as an accessory. Outside of the first twenty minutes of the film, where we see him tortured by nightmares and being attached as a living IV pole to a half-life named Nux, Max is used as more of a background prop, and takes a literal backseat to the story of Furiosa. He isn't weak by any means, and has retained all of the action smarts of the original, Mel Gibson character, but his character exists as a sidekick who finds different ways to aid Furiosa and to fight off Joe's forces without taking over as leader. But what really surprised me was the treatment of the women from the get-go. Yes, they're slaves. Yes, like the rest of the cast, the slaves are wearing precious more than a blanket. And yes, many of the women were used sexually. And yet, at no point in the film do Joe, or any of the other villains, address the females by slur terms, nor do they ever crack any jokes based on gender. In the entire film, I never once heard a “back in the kitchen” joke or even a sexual comment. Not once is any of the women degraded to being less than human, despite their status as sex slaves. In fact, in one of the most powerful points of the epic, when Angharad, the favorite wife of Joe who is severely pregnant with their son, sacrifices herself to save Max during a race, the film stops and becomes self aware. We see Joe, frantically begging an on-board doctor to do what he can to save her and the infant, but when both die during an emergency cesarean section, Joe actually grieves. He mourns her loss and the loss of the baby boy, and all of the villains bow their heads in memorial. The only bit of discernible dialogue comes from Joe's half-life adult son, who begins telling the grieving villains “I had a baby brother, he was perfect in every way!” For as evil as Joe is, to see such sorrow and compassion in his eyes was an unexpected twist when compared to the average movie villain, and even to the bitter end, he never tries to degrade Furiosa or diminish her power. He views her as on his level, and in some segments, even wants her to return to his army. As twisted as this sounds, this abusive cretin actually seems to care about the women he's enslaved, and not just because they offer him children or sex. Another great thing about this movie was that it was stewing in an overwhelming sense of hope, something usually left on the cutting room floor for most post-apocalyptic films. Even after Furiosa discovers the truth about her homeland, her tribe convinces her to keep hope alive. The whole film long, the slaves are encouraged to not give up on their future, and it's that drive for hope that not only saves the day, but also gives the women the courage they need to take up the weapons and start protecting themselves as well. Unlike most of today's Hollywood approved films, Fury Road never felt “emo” or whiny, a breath of fresh air amid a slue of movies and TV shows that are steeped in drama. Mad Max Fury Road shook up the landscape for aggressive films. It wasn't overtly masculine, and it held strong to the theme of gender equality, without making it seem abnormal. It's a secret pro-feminist movie surrounded by a thought provoking cast of characters, and deserves a higher honor than Hollywood is willing to give. Koriander Bullard is an author, cartoonist and human rights advocate. Keep up with her on Facebook! |
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***** A phenomenal film Archives
March 2017
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